posted October 15, 2013 03:30 AM            

I thank my lucky stars I don't know what it's like to be a blind person climbing stairs; I do, however, know how it feels to be me attempting the same in the dark.

Curious thing, when you can't see what's in front of you: you cling more tightly to what you know is there, struggling to gain a foothold, to find purchase in anything - floor, wall, railing, rug - any and everything in between.

Fortunately, I know these stairs. I've climbed them thousands of times during my residency here. I know them by rote. Automatic. My feet don't have to think where they need to go. They just get there.

Funny, then, how I suddenly have no idea where I'm going. Because I'm thinking about it.

If I trusted my rote memory to guide my way, I'd likely get there with less of a production. But, here I am, guessing. Speculating. Shuffling slowly, moving the soles of my feet cautiously against each step, holding fast to the railing, my back bone straight, my whole body tensed.

Because everything in my being says I'm going to fall. I'm GOING to FALL. I have NO idea where the next step is, so I'm SURE I'm going to MISS it.

After a good several steps in the pitch dark, I realise that this method will get me there. If I'm careful, if I hold tightly to the railing, if I move my feet slowly along each step, only stopping when my toe hits the base of the one above it - I could do this.

Maybe.

That's when it happened.

I shut my eyes.

Completely counterproductive to the strategy I'd just chosen to adopt - the one that was most likely to get me there safely.

I just shut my eyes.

Why? To block out the dark?

No.

To feel my way.

To FEEL things in a way I can't with my eyes, because my vision is useless here. Can I see? Ha. No.

But I can feel; in order to feel, I have to not attempt to see. I have to shut my eyes.

I have to trust my other senses.

So, I surrendered to something there on the stairs. To the dark. To the uncertainty. To the fear that drove my caution. The caution that drove me to pay such close attention to what I could NOT do, what I was inhibited from doing, what was making things more difficult for me, and my journey laborious and terrifying.

I surrendered.

My grip loosened against the railing. My foot lifted, practically of its own accord.

Maybe I've been here before; I've seen this room, I've walked this floor.

But love is not a victory march.

When you're trudging along in the dark, even your familiarity suddenly feels foreign. Everything you rely upon to get through is rendered cumbersome, and you clumsy.

It's a cold, and it's a broken, hallelujah.

As I reached the top, I reopened my eyes. I thought:

I made it.

I'd closed my eyes; I lost track of every single step I was taking, and I suddenly began walking again, climbing, as if I weren't in the dark at all. Suddenly, my body felt it was no longer compensating for what I couldn't see.

I had befriended the darkness, the uncertainty. My own fear that it would take me. That I would fall.

I surrendered to the power of my own ability to navigate what I don't know.

I subjected myself to the tender mercies of nothingness.

And it freed me. To climb again. To reach that final step, the one which I feared the most. I got there before I even realised I had.

And I did it 'blind'.

When the world comes in to build a wall between us, we know they won't win.

Don't let them win.