This man drove a certain long and winding road often. It was the quicker route between work and home. He pushed through it as fast as possible whenever he took it. His eyes would dart from windshield to rearview mirror, checking every car on the road, and he frequently reminded himself to look to the lane of oncoming cars so he had as many opportunities as possible to use it to pass anything slowing him down. He used his eyes to change the radio station. He used them to check his cell phone. He never used them to look at the surrounding countryside, or the beach at the far end of the largest bend in the highway.
The man knew this road would take him where he wanted to go, but he never knew where he was when he took it. He never bothered to learn his way. For all practical purposes, he was lost, but he figured GPS and his cell and his auto club membership would get him out of any snags. That was until he totaled his car. It happened at the beginning of the largest bend, with the sun just beginning to set. The light affected his eyes, but not his accelerator. The man had come from a bad day at work, the other drivers were too slow, and he'd had enough. The bright, orangey-yellow sun was the last thing he ever saw. He never saw the oncoming pickup truck. It was head-on. The survival of both drivers was, in a word, miraculous. However, the man's windshield shattered.
His eyes were peppered with tiny shards of broken glass. They were beyond the help of medicine. From then on, he would be called the blind man wherever he went. The darkness that consumed his sight was an easy metaphor for the way his life turned. In typical fashion, the calamity caused a man who had everything to lose everything. He drank to cope with his blindness and it cost him his job. He drank more. Financial and alcohol issues put a strain on his marriage. His despair broke it. He drank more.
Finally, when the man was evicted from his apartment, his friends and family had a reason to step in. He quickly drove them away. It was fortunate, for his sake, that they started him on therapy even quicker. Oh, he had no use for the free clinic shrink, for sure, but it was one of those right place, right time experiences.
The woman was a little too New Age and extroverted for his liking, but it was a good thing because women like that couldn't care less. If people were bothered by this woman being apt to make the first move, she certainly wasn't bothered by them. He felt her sit down in the seat immediately next to his.
"I hate it when people assume," she started, "so... are you blind?"
His smile was dripping sarcasm before he spoke. "What gave it away? Maybe it was these sunglasses, or possibly this giant candy cane I'm holding."
"Actually, it was your feet," she said. "They're pointed toward the exit. I'm guessing you wouldn't be caught dead here unless you were waiting to go into an appointment."
"I'm not really into all this psychiatric... stuff." With that, he pointed his feet in the other direction.
"The worst part is anticipation. We're subconsciously drawn to look toward the thing we need to be ready for, and then we point our feet."
"So you know this stuff pretty well. You're a doctor then?"
"Nope," the woman said, "the only ones who know about anticipation are the patients."
"You're a patient."
"Aren't I well-adjusted?"
"Very," he said. "Why do you have to keep coming here?"
"Because I'm honest," she said. "I used to hallucinate. I don't any more, but I talk freely about spirituality and it makes them nervous."
"You don't want to convert me, do you?"
She grinned brightly and asked, "To what?"
"I don't know."
"I'm able to... see things, y'know, in people."
"But I thought," he paused, shifted in his seat, and continued, "I thought you said you don't hallucinate any more."
"Maybe I should say, 'feel things.' But you speak to my point... these doctors here don't see the difference between delusion and belief."
"Is there a difference?"
"Of course there is." The woman said this with a sweet sincerity that made things not quite so serious for the man.
"I'd say you're pretty optimistic," the man responded.
"I am!"
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