Happily, I am no longer ashamed of my low vision (for the most part)

“Good grief, Carlene, must you sit so close to the TV??” This, along with “Why do you have your face literally in your book” are two questions I heard a lot in my lifetime. Another was “Can’t you see?!?! You need to get new glasses.” I’ve heard so many comments like these that I wish I had a dollar for every time someone has noticed my obvious nearsightedness. For several years these comments were shaming to me. I tried to compensate for my less-than-stellar vision, tried to hide the fact that I have a visual problem that is not my fault. Sometimes I have felt so ashamed, such as at some job I had when frustrated that I couldn’t see certain things. This shame has often resulted in tears, which of course I’ve also tried to hide.

Not anymore. As I often tell people, there are good things about adding years to one’s age, and one of those things is that a person sometimes accepts what is and no longer frets so much about it. For some years I’ve realized that I need to live in a large-print world, and reading glasses…