"why god?" part 1

This is the question you ask in between gut wrenching periods of tears,

It was the day you found out or the day you really knew,

Everyone has gone through it, and you never forget that moment.

sophomore year high school swim team

My sophomore year of high school had started really well, i was on the swim team, was in theater mostly back stage but was excited to audition for the new play even for a small part.The play was called "The Canterville Ghost", a fun English pay about a ghost who never passed on and was attempting to haunt an English family's home.To my great excitement i was casted in my first play as one of the unwelcome house
geists. It was a funny role , full of physical comedy and comic relief.These were the roles i wanted, not the drama but that funny character who comes on for a brief moment but makes you laugh, laugh so much you remember that little part even when its over.

The only thing that could've topped this feeling was that i got accepted into drivers ed class at the beginning of the year.I couldn't wait to drive, i had picked out the car i wanted at the time and my father had begun bringing me out at night into the high school parking lot to practice. Unknown to me my father was trying to find me a Honda 750 motorcycle as my first vehicle, i wanted a Camero. All i needed was to pass the test and to go to the eye doctor.

Ugh the eye doctor, my whole life that person became the nemesis of my existence. I had been told i had everything wrong with me from lazy eye, to just plain lying. When they gave me glass i managed to always break or lose them, the migraines i got were worse then punishment for talking in class.Nevertheless with  a referral from my brothers girlfriend at the time we went to a new doctor to get my vision test for my permit .It took a while to get the results from my test but my mom informed me i would need to get more tests from a referral doctor.

there was a pit in my stomach.Why? Why did i need more tests, am i about to be a new doctors guinea pig again ??

I left from school one day and went with my mom to the new doctor.Everything seem fine til i heard him tell my mother i need a special test.She reassured me it was just to help me get some new glasses and it would be fine.My mother was always great at calming me down, she knew what to say to rationalize it enough that i stopped worrying.We came back a week later and i sat confused as he gave me some excuse for the test he was going to do. My mind quickly thought it was something straight out of the clockwork orange.It was a dye test, where i had to hold open my eyes one at a time, not blink and wait for photos of my eye to be taken. After this they injected my  eye with yellow dye, then more drops in my eyes and had me repeat  the test again. It was called a Fluorescein angiography. "Fluorescein angiography is a test which allows the blood vessels in the back of the eye to be photographed as a fluorescent dye is injected into the bloodstream via your hand or arm". I had more drops at the end and went home eyes burning behind wrap around dark shades, my mom had to lead me around.

Time passed and it was weeks after my test, i had been dong really well in my drivers ed class learning the "rules of the road", and it was opening night of my show."Rachel please don't read this but pass this to your nurse today."my mother handed me an envelope from the eye doctor. She gave me a brief explanation that it was what they needed and wed talk about it later after my show. I didn't really think about it much for the rest of the day. So much that i forgot to give it to the nurse,..

Opening night i was so excited, my mom was there and my brother, i remembered all my lines and was ready. I had just finished my costume , all my body makeup and my hair.I was bored, i didn't come on til the end of the first act, i thought maybe id  find something to do.I looked through my backpack to find something to pass the time, and there it was the envelope i forgot to drop off. I held it and wondered why it was so secret and felt curious and thought i'd read it.

I still wish i hadn't , that night wasn't the time for it, and i was not ready for what it contained. My whole life changed in a second, everything i thought id do, be , drive, everything. I swear i heard the world stop around me.I don't remember much of those first moments after the first line
"after testing we have found that patient has age related Stargardts Macular degeneration,.."
as i read i remember feeling like every bone in my body turned into jello, then i felt hands on me helping me back up off the floor. My eyes started to burn from all the Ben Nye makeup running in them.

A felt a friend take the letter from my hand,."oh my god!"
I never thought id stop crying, I had never been so lost in my life.

Stop the world ,....I wanna get off.

Nothing was more embarrassing then looking up with tear blurred eyes to a crowd off teenagers all looking at you as if you were some poor pathetic injured animal. At this point I'm pretty sure almost everyone back there had read the letter or told it via the telephone game till everyone knew.

this was about the time that the first stage of fear and pain started to fade and the numb shock stage set in. They were holding me up and i just stood there numb cold, and confused. I was a little cleared and took the letter back, reading it over now with fine tooth comb."vision is around 20/200 and would benefit from disability assistance ",."this is a degenerative disease"..."visually impaired/legally blind,.."would not benefit from glasses", and somewhere was a referral for a specialist in Stargardts.
I looked up at my friends and all i could say was" I'm going blind?"

The teacher came in and was quickly briefed my a new crowd of students apparently already up on the situation. She asked me if i was going on, told me to brush it off. What choice did i have i had family in the audience. A frantic array of hands came to me everyone trying to help get me back into character hair makeup, to group my senses back to go and perform. Somehow and i still don't know how i did it, i did, i lost myself in my character, i toppled out upside down , i did my Chevy Chase prop falls, i hit every joke, and i bowed at the curtain call. my greatest performance was not showing how scared and terrified i really was.

By the end of the night my mom knew i read it, my brother found out, and my father lost it. my numb stage lasted awhile, they didn't yell at me even when they heard me crying ,i know my mom heard , but she gave me space. She was the strongest I don't know how it was as a parent to be that Strong for me while she knew what was going on, but she did. I think about that as i parent my daughter, who got the letter this week that she is being referred to a eye doctor for failing the schools vision test. Could i be that strong for her?

I had brought the letter into school, the head of the P.E. department told me i was making it all up and made me finish my drivers ed class, I scored an A, the most pointless A i would ever get. Needless to say my mother had a phone conversation with that woman and she was the sweetest lady every time we spoke after.

It was around this time that the longest phase hit , the "why God" phase.We have all asked this, whom ever you pray or whatever your beliefs, when you get the news that your world is changing in any drastic way, you ask it, and you patiently wait for that answer.

form me, i took out the Bible my great grandmother had given me, i opened it. I was determined to read it from beginning to end in search of finding my answers,..

we all remember where we started to look for answers, I think sometimes remembering were we started makes us appreciate where we are going and where we have gotten to,....