Juliana describes how glaucoma led to vision loss and how she found her way to acceptance.

The once soft skin around my eye has sunken into something ill and lifeless. The world is no longer magical. The sky is no longer limitless. The chirping and songs of the birds are no longer music to my ears. It’s very dark. Both from a practical view and a mental state. I spend my days lying in my bed in the dark, resting my eyes. I can no longer go to school. It feels excruciating; my pain is never-ending. My face grimaces and contorts into a hurtful expression. The smile that has always been on my face is now gone. I feel dead inside. My tongue is dry, and it feels as if someone put itching powder in my throat. After many painful months, my eye doctor tells me of a surgery that can fix my eye, so my family and I decide to go ahead with the surgery. It is as if the sun were coming out from the clouds.

The day of the surgery, I am full of hope. Smiling on the inside and outside. I’m used to the hospital. I'm not scared of it. I have had many surgeries throughout my life. Still this surgery is the most important one: it will potentially save my sight and stop the pain. Nurses smile kindly as they stick IVs in me. They remark on how good my veins are. I have always been fascinated with blood and veins, since I contemplate a career in the medical field, so I take their observation as a compliment.

“You’re on deck,” my doctor says in a gentle voice. I know my surgery is going to happen soon and I am excited. Most people would be nervous in my position, but I’m fascinated by all the medical equipment and the hustle and bustle of the doctors. Eventually, I get carted off to the operating room.

When I reach the operating room, I notice it is sparse and bright like all other operating rooms I have been in. The walls are cream and pristine. This time I’m eager for my operation to begin. I am not scared like I was before other operations. The anesthesiologist injects me with the anesthesia, and I drift into sleep.

I wake up. It’s after my surgery. I keep my eyes closed and match my breath to the beeping of the machines that surround my bed. I eventually open my eyes, but I notice I see nothing out of my right eye. Just white.

Eventually, the pain from before came back, and I still cannot see out of my right eye. So, we go to the eye doctor.

“You have to get your eye removed,” he admits rather reluctantly. I inhale sharply, trying to focus on his words. I learned that my surgery had failed, and the doctors tried to do everything they could to save my eye, but they couldn’t.

There’s something indelible about hearing you need a body part removed. You feel like you failed even though it is out of your control. You are plagued by despair and hopelessness. Bitter. Unforgiving pain. You wish it would not have turned out this way. But it does. Fortunately, with losing a body part comes a journey of acceptance and self-love. Acceptance is when you pause, gather strength, breathe, and let self-love guide you. Acceptance allows you to know that you believe in yourself after all. Self-love is expressed in the way you walk, more confident than before, holding your head a little higher. It is realizing that you must reach for the sun, and you are a precious part of life on Earth.

Fast forward exactly two years later from my failed surgery. I am now on a stage with a prosthetic eyeball in place of my old right eye about to give a speech, specifically, a motivational speech. I start presenting and my speech promises a new dawn for me, and hopefully for the audience. Hope is alive. It just needed time to surface in me. Oddly enough, the speech was scheduled on the day exactly two years after my failed eye surgery. I tell the audience this and get a standing ovation. I can feel the positivity flow, recharging my neurons. I have always wanted to help others, and touch them with my words, and that’s what I did on this day. At times, I choose to relive those moments of struggle and bitterness. But things change. I choose to not be stuck in the past. I could have chosen to wallow in the depression of losing a body part, but instead I chose to share my speech. Overcoming struggles is one of life’s greatest treasures. No matter how terrifying the malicious, twisted tree of darkness is, the seeds of hope in the ground allow us to get up.

Juliana, New Jersey

Speech given as a sophomore in high school