My Lost Treasures

Sobering up am I, now, from the high of celebrating. This is how this new journey of rediscovery of lost parts of me is unfolding today as fresh insights flood my consciousness, especially regarding my recovery from blindness.

Up until now I have been in the dark, metaphorically and in fact, as to how it was for me to be blind. How did I fill my long days and nights during that time?

How might I answer the question, “Anastasia, how was it to be blind?” A question asked by very few; only those with the courage to know, if I could tell.

Diamonds in the rough

But I could not until now, or, at least not very much. 

All I could bring to mind was that I had spent my time of those eight years (1998 – 2006) mostly with that Higher Power or Source of all life, the Divine; meditating, contemplating, struggling for that contact when the terrors came which was very often in those days.

I once read that Helen Keller had stated --

Nearly everything in the natural world is as vague, as remote from my senses, as spiritual things seem to the minds of most people.

So it was for me too; the world that would ordinarily have come to me via my senses had been seriously cut off. Now, however, because of my unfolding notebooks project, I am beginning to discover what I could not see earlier, even with my eyesight restored. I had not been ready yet to open myself to what had been so dramatically lost to me. But now, apparently, I am.

One major aspect of my blind times, now becoming increasingly vivid, has to do with how I managed what became an almost totally solitary life without feeling alone or lonely.

How strange, now that I am able to look at this piece, especially as where I had come from, sighted, was filled with such an abundance of wonderful, loving, intimate relationships.

As a result of my notebooks project, I am beginning to see the contrasts of how it was for me, living blind, and how it was not, beginning to see into the world I left behind as I entered the one that was dark.  Not black blind, as I have shared before, but opaque as though I was seeing through two sheets of waxed paper.

Nonetheless, today what I am most aware of, the notebooks project bringing me closer and closer to that world I left behind, are the countless people that were closest to me; the members of the Discount Derby Community.

Never was there such an extended life experience of “awe,” shared by so many, at least not for me!

My Discount Derby Community!  This is what I am remembering most today.

They were the unpolished gems that filled so much of my world before blindness; a mound of diamonds in the rough, presenting themselves to one another as well as to me in such a manner as to invite each to be master cutters of the brilliantly sparkling gems each would, in turn, become; me included.

As much as I was their teacher, too often elevated to guru-status which I never sought and frequently loathed, I was also always the student. And what a classroom we did create; the collective that we were!

So much more must be revealed if this communal life adventure it brought us can be even justly considered. Over time I will do my best to get to it, if I am able.

(Originally we called ourselves the Game Community.  Later, at the time of the onset of my blindness, we had evolved our name into the Truth or Dare Community. But it was the “Discount Derby Community” that spoke most truly of who we were.)

I believe the doorway is open wide now for me to turn toward those loved ones, left behind until now physically, emotionally and spiritually but not quite entirely. Truth be told they were with me always even when I wasn’t looking, my lost treasures. Not lost to me at all.

So today, in honor of this next leg of my journey I am pledging myself to do my utmost to, once again, find these lost treasures.

To carry that out, I took a pause from this writing to call one of my long lost “honorary daughters” to check up on her and see how she’s doing in her life.

I loved it that I got through to her right away and found out she is still growing as I would have her do.

So delicious!