Prompt:You lose your sight along with everyone else on earth in an event called the great blinding. Two years later, without warning, your sight returns. As you look around, you realize that every available wall, floor, and surface has been painted with the same message- DONT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE…

I live in a world of blindness. I wasn’t always blind, but after a while, the change makes you forget what the world looks like. I desperately wanted to remember how the flowers looked and how the sunrise beamed through the blinds on a Sunday morning, the way the sky grayed before it was going to rain, but I couldn’t. Two years of blindness has had such an effect on me, two years of lost memories and time. It wasn’t just me who had lost the ability to see, it was every human being in an event commonly known as The Great Blinding. But that didn’t make it any less of a burden. Some people shut down. Others, like me, learned to live with it.

Now, two years later, I still vividly remember the last time I saw my mother. I always wonder as to why the great blindness came to be. Was this a form of punishment? Is there something we don’t know? Would you not if one day you could see and the next not? Wouldn’t you demand answers no one had? Because two years ago, on this very day, I forgot how the world looks, could never manage to complete certain daily tasks, and struggled through life itself. Today, coincidentally, was my best friend’s birthday as well as the day that ruined my life.

Precisely two years later, that morning, as I felt my way through the unorganized piles of differently textured clothes I picked out an outfit knowing that no one would see it anyway. Honestly, in moments like those, I thanked the great blindness. Maybe it was a “blessing” like I was told in the church. I crawled to the doorway, careful to not accidentally knock down anything while reaching my cane. I felt a burning sensation in my left eye that quickly spread to my right, kinda like sandpaper. I let out a little yelp not loud enough to be heard around the house. I rubbed my eyes in hopes that the pain would disappear. The burning ended abruptly as I proceeded to rapidly blink at the sight of a blinding white light. I opened my eyes fully for the first time. Gasped at all the colors. I could see!… but that can’t be right…Was I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? Then, a feeling of joy washed over me as I looked at my reflection in the cracked and dead phone screen. That moment of peace and joy didn’t last long. I noticed a bright red message all over the floors and walls…

“Don’t Tell Them You Can See” was plastered all over in a haunting yet rushed handwritten font. What was that supposed to mean? Before I could process such overwhelming panic, I heard my mom yell from downstairs.