What is it they say?
The past is just a memory and not a place to visit or change:
While traveling on this journey of sight loss I have stopped myself from ‘going back’ to many places, places I loved before my sight deteriorated, places like Nottingham; that I called home for three years, where I studied for my degree and more memorably; where I first encountered a real life police horse (but that is another story!)
I haven’t gone back, even though as I was leaving university the city was in the final stages of having its tram installed, so even without sight loss I know that it would look very different from the way it looked 13 Years ago, but with my sight changing so much in that time, I am scared.
Some would say I am very ‘lucky’ and ‘fortunate’ that my sight has reduced gradually and in such a way that I find myself adjusting to it on a daily basis and as such I haven’t ‘noticed’ it so much.
I’m not sure I would call it luck or fortune …..
Especially when I go back, back to places of my past. This is when I am able to see the differences, especially in those place where I can no longer ACTUALLY see.
Yesterday I caught myself in just such a moment. Not in a physical place, but rather while watching an old movie.
Not an old movie as in black and white, or set in the Wild West, a movie that is now 18 years old, (even idiot realise it was not THAT OLD!) a movie that; as a book loving romantic I could recite pretty much word for word. And more importantly (for me at least) and to help you understand its significance a film that was released Pre-Audio Descript !!
A film that until I thought about it, I probably hadn’t seen in the last 10 years, the very same ten years that I noticed my sight getting worse.
It isn’t one of The Great films of all time, no it is a silly, soppy, romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
A film that’s opening soundtrack is a computer connecting to a wired Internet connection !
yup, you may have guessed, The film was You’ve Got Mail.
The movie that found me crying my heart out, the movie that got me realising that even holding my iPad up to within an inch of my face, I could no longer make out the little details.
The little details like the lettering on the shop front, or the newspaper headlines or more importantly in the final scene, when they kiss, it just a jumbled mess of colours, no facial details, no contrast between them and the background in the scene.
And all those things about that I have described above are totally irrational, ridiculous ‘third-world’ issues and hold no bearing on my life today
It is JUST an old film.
It is JUST a silly teenagers memories of ideals.
And yet, it is JUST a smack in the face moment of recognition that I have actually lost so much.
