02/04/05 - Judgement
Folk like to pass judgment on other people's relationships. Who hasn't done a bit of cerebral rubber-necking over what the better-looking half of a couple is doing with their less good-looking/shorter/badly dressed companion? 'How did s/he pull him/her?' you muse in private.
But some people speak their minds. I bump into an acquaintance. 'How's it going with that punk man?' she asks.
'It's not,' I say.
'Why?!' she says in a tone of shock fringed with disbelief.
'It just didn't feel right,' I reply.
'But he didn't care about your eyes.'
'And ... ?'
'Well, I'm not being funny, but it's going to be hard to find someone who can see past the certainty of your future. Life is about compromise. Quite frankly, I think you've been an idiot. You should've been grateful.'
I feel very pissed off. I know she's only articulating the awkward thoughts lots of people will have rotting away in their minds, and it doesn't feel nice. For a sorry moment I wonder if maybe she's right. Then I realise, actually, she's very wrong.
I know about compromise. It happens every day. If I go out with a mate, I won't be driving; they will. The itinerary is theirs. If they want to head off at 6.30am because they need to get back and mow the lawn, so do I. It's not so bad, but staying with someone you don't love out of nothing more than self-deprecating gratitude? Would you?
16/04/05 - Blind Man
Last week I went to the library. As I ambled home, I spotted a man ahead fiercely sweeping the pavement with a long, white stick. Wrestling angrily with vanity and fate, I'm staving off getting one for as long as I can, but deep down I know I'll probably have to one day.
I lingered several paces behind, watching as this man and his tactile tool navigated the pavement before him, dodging misplaced street furniture, a small dog on a string, someone sitting by the cash machine and countless 'helpful' people who attempted to drag him off in directions he didn't want to go despite the fact that he was clearly managing (albeit in a different way) on his own.
I wasn't the only one looking. Half the street was consuming the spectacle of the blind man crossing the road. And it's a spectacle that won't stare back, so there's no need to adhere to the universal 'It's rude to look for too long' etiquette. Gawp all you like! It's a peepshow on the pavement. And gawp they did. One man stopped six times to turn back and get just one more look at the fascinating sight of someone walking down the street.
I felt cross. I know I was staring, too, but in however many years, when the spectacle becomes me and people stop in their tracks to watch me crossing the road, the one person I'll forgive is the person who's staring because they've got it yet to come.
23/04/05 - Height
Going blind is like growing old when you're still young. Things change. You're still the same, but everyone thinks you're different. People judge you more, and maybe your dying eyes mean you judge them less. Except, in certain matters, there is no such thing as 'doing as you would be done by'. You may not like folk making presumptions about the new you, but you still wheel out the same prejudices about everyone that you always did.
Somewhere on the way, I've constructed an infantile rule that forbids me from dating men under 6ft. All my exes have measured up. One came in at a stringy 6ft 5in. I loved him especially; he made me feel smaller than I really am, and my hands and feet daintier than they'll ever be. But my self-inflicted restrictions have rendered me a fool. I'm guilty of not even bothering to explore the inner beings of a host of less than lanky corporal vessels that have advanced upon me over the years. In some kind of nasty process of natural selection that would have had Darwin screaming, 'I told you so', I've exercised my very own dating eugenics programme.
It's unjust, unfounded and, as a bloke I know recently told me, it's got to stop. I've previously rejected his propositions on the grounds of his less than tall stature. Understandably, he's not impressed. The last time we met, he said that, had I been a house and on the market as long as I have been, then the unrealistic asking price would have come down by now.
30/04/05 - 12 years
When I was a precocious yoof, I had hoop earrings, denim and plans. I was going to be a mechanic, or a truckie like my uncle. But then I saw a doctor who pissed his prognosis all over my burning teen dreams.
'You're gonna go blind,' he said.
'When?' I replied.
'Two, five, maybe 20 years,' he posited vaguely. I didn't say anything. I just looked at the floor and gagged on my own throat. The authority I thought I had over my body and life was gone. I wasn't invincible, after all. I suppose in some ways it must be a bit like finding out you've got a terminal illness and no one knows how long you've got to go. Suddenly the fragility of your existence falls out of the sky and flattens you with a tonne weight of insurmountable grief. It wasn't very rock'n'roll.
I wondered what I was going to do for a job now I knew that I'd never drive a lorry. Later that night, two friends came over. They didn't know what to say. Instead, they started to lament their own lives and discuss which of them had the worse lot: the one with the volcanic eruptions of acne who was unable to pull a boy called Ray in the year above, or the one whose period had shown through her trousers at school the day before?
They were 17, talking about things I wished I still cared about, but didn't. I told them to go home. Everything was different now. That was 12 years ago today.