Blind Leading the Blind

Date: 12/23/2025

I have gone blind. I can’t see a damn thing. Not even the suggestion of a thing. Complete, sodding darkness. Panic detonates in my chest — sharp, immediate, humiliating. I yelp, an undignified animal sound, crying into nothing. My hands claw my face. I try to prise my eyes open, fingers digging at lids that should obey me. They don’t. My eyelids are fused shut. Sealed. As if someone has glued them together with industrial-strength string-hold adhesive — cruel, unyielding, final. I cannot see. I stumble hopelessly, arms flailing, colliding with air that suddenly feels solid. I tell myself this is just a blip. A glitch. A temporary system failure. I bargain silently: If you give me my sight back, I’ll appreciate it properly. I’ll be grateful. I’ll never complain again. If I will it hard enough, my eyelids will flutter open. They don’t. “Calm, Amanda. Just calm yourself,” I whisper, clinging to my name like it might anchor me to my body. Then — A flicker. Microscopic. Barely there. A pinprick of light. A shy star bruising its way through thick cloud. It wasn’t there before. This fragile, dangerous glimmer of hope. My chest tightens around it. I want it too much — as if wanting could force it into existence. I pull at my heavy eyelids again. They resist — stubborn blinds refusing to be raised, weighted with intention. “Come on, you bastard things,” I mutter. Bargaining now. Begging. And then — They open. Relief crashes over me, hot and dizzying. I can see again. Hallelujah. Thank God. Praise the lord. The world snaps back into focus — ordinary and miraculous all at once. It must have been that weird eye disorder Maxi has — the one where his brain refuses to communicate with his eye muscles and he just… can’t open his eyes. Watching it happen to him is terrifying. Living it, even briefly, feels obscene. But I can see again. I am fine. The panic evaporates. The lesson goes with it. Because of my brief flirtation with blindness, I now have a trial run at a school for the blind. The irony presses in —noticeable, inconvenient, easily ignored. My job is to help blind children plan specific routes — paths they can memorise, internalise, trust enough to walk alone. Independence by repetition. Confidence by muscle memory. How noble of me, eh? I lead a line of blind kids along like some budget Pied Piper of blind mice, voice bright with authority I haven’t earned, doling out directions like a smug driving instructor. “We’re taking the next left,” I announce. Then the sky splits open. Rain crashes down without warning, drenching us in seconds. Without hesitation — without even a flicker of guilt — I abandon ship. I bolt for cover, shoes slapping, heart pounding, leaving a class of blind children standing helplessly in the rain behind me. What can I say? I’m selfish. Perhaps not the right fit for the job. I find a lobby and slip inside. Salvation. There’s a huge Victorian radiator in the centre of the room — warm, steady, forgiving. I press myself against it, steaming faintly as my soaked clothes begin to dry. Just me. Just my lonely, self-centred little bubble of warmth. It is bliss. Until the door bursts open and bodies pour in, flooding the space, shoulder to shoulder. I’m shimmyed off my radiator — peeled away from my beautiful metal comfort object. How dare they? More people spill in. The air thickens. The room swells and contracts. I can’t breathe. Oxygen feels rationed. Panic claws at my throat. I try to escape, but bodies slam into me from all sides. No clear route — just flesh, damp coats, impatience. Eventually, I spill back outside, gasping. Freedom. The rain has stopped. I gulp air greedily. My clothes cling to me, cold and heavy. For a brief moment — a small, inconvenient moment — I think of the blind kids I left behind in the downpour. The thought passes as quickly as it comes. It always does. A vintage classic car idles arrogantly in the road. Zusanna stands beside it, hair drenched, flirting shamelessly with a mechanic. Not her barman boyfriend. Not The Grump. The mechanic. She strokes his muscular arm, leans in, whispers sweet nothings. “Nice car,” I offer, because I don’t know what else to do with myself. Zusanna looks me up and down like I’m a drowned feral rat. In all fairness, I practically am. Soaked. Stringy. Sad. A familiar sadness stirs — old, dependable, sharp as ever. My presence is clearly unwanted. Message received. I retreat, wet tail between legs. The boys appear behind me with Mat. My husband. He wants to go to The Real McCoy — a vintage clothes shop. Technically a glorified charity shop, but I don’t have the energy to argue semantics. Apples and pears and all that. As we turn to go inside, a woman walks out. Her face looks like every person I have ever known. All of them at once. It’s uncanny. Unsettling. Comforting and horrifying in equal measure. She smiles at me. I feel like I know her inside out — like a book I’ve read so often I could recite it backwards. Then she’s gone, dissolving into the crowd. Inside, Mat finds a pair of baggy jeans. He gazes at them wistfully, lost in memory. He wore baggy jeans when I met him. Ones that sagged down at the arse, exposing his bottom. Adorably… awful. “What d’you reckon, Mandy? Shall I get these?” I shake my head. “Those days are gone,” I say, quietly. Deflated, he hooks them back on the hanger. The scene spins — recycled, discarded, forgotten — like old clothes. I’m at Laura’s house. Or something like it. It’s too sterile for her. No plants. No incense burning. No warmth. I hug her hard, but it feels wrong. Foreign. Like she isn’t Laura anymore. Like another soul is wearing her skin — someone serious, closed, unreadable. Jenni arrives, frazzled, clutching a baby “Aww… this must be…” I pause. My cheeks burn. I’ve forgotten her baby’s name. My traitorous brain humiliates me again. The silence stretches — thick, accusatory. “Dotty!” I blurt, far too late — and yet I’m pleased with the delivery, like timing is a minor detail. She hands me the baby. She’s beautiful. Soft. Perfect. But — I know. A boy. The face shape. The weight. The energy. Not the girl Jenni had secretly prayed for. A boy dressed in girl’s clothes. Laura knows that I know. I see it flicker in between us. She gives me a look. No words needed. Just go along with it. “He’s so gorgeous, Jenni,” I say, stroking the baby’s hair. Jenni snatches the baby back, eyes flashing. “She’s a girl,” she snaps. Whoops. My world drops into darkness. Voices surround me. Children. “Amanda?” one calls. “Can you guide me?” I can’t see. I’m blind again. Truly, completely blind. I stumble, colliding into unseen obstacles, hands scraping at walls that aren’t there. Panic rises — hot, choking, intimate. “Amanda,” the children chorus. “I can’t see!” I say — and for once, I don’t shout. Rain begins again. Soft at first. Then heavier. Then merciless. It thrashes against my body, soaking through me. The sound is deafening, inescapable. The children cry out around me, directionless, waiting. I reach out, arms useless, searching for something — anything. Something Solid. Something certain. something warm. There is nothing. In the sudden, unbearable quiet, it settles into me — cold and irrevocable: I am still blind.