In my book Look At It This Way: The Blind Leading The Sighted, I wrote a chapter called Sheltered and Unsheltered. In it, I explored the difference between blind people who are protected from the world and those who have been given the tools, space, and confidence to move through it on their own.

I am the kind of person who feels everything. When I’m happy, I’m really happy. When I’m sad, I’m really sad. When I’m angry, I feel it in my bones. There is no dimmer switch inside me. My emotions don’t whisper — they speak clearly.

One moment she was standing in the kitchen, staring at the empty space where his laughter used to echo through her phone — the space that used to hold their daily rhythm. Every morning. Every night. Hours of talking. Hours of dreaming. The next moment, her knees buckled beneath the weight of a future that had dissolved without warning.

In my last essay, I wrote about an experience when I was ten years old where I felt treated differently because of my blindness. This story is about another moment from that same year—one that shaped me in a very different way.

In every family there are people we grow close to and people we never quite reach. In my own family, I have experienced both.

One of the most defining things about me is how much I love food. I get genuinely excited about it—the anticipation of its arrival, the first aroma, the first bite. I love bold flavors, layered textures, creative seasonings, and dishes from all over the world. Food, to me, is an experience.

This is a difficult story for me to write. It begins, in a way, with darkness. Not the kind that comes from nightfall, but the kind that arrives when something ends and you are left trying to understand where the ground is beneath you again.