A year and a half ago, I gained a permanent dance partner. That’s what I’ve decided. That’s how I need to think about the damage to my visual field from an unfortunate multiple sclerosis flare-up.
If I were a filmmaker, I’d show my dance partner as one of the monsters from a Hayao Miyazaki animated movie. My monster is big and bulky and squishy and always there, pressed awkwardly up against my left side. Everything I see on the left side of my visual field, in both eyes, is hazy and squashed, and some is obscured altogether. When I try to look at someone through the monster’s mass, that person’s face is melting. One eye is an inch below where it should be, and that side of the person’s mouth smears into his chin. The distortion is different at the bottom. The monster must be giving me a hug, because he presses everything from the bottom of that side upward and toward the center, so my blurry left hand is closer to my face than it ought to be.
The monster means well…