Desirees’s Story of Relief
"Oh, this is how everybody else feels."
Desiree had been blaming herself for not reading.
It started in high school. She couldn’t focus on the page. Her eyes drifted in and out. She’d turn the page and realize she had no idea what was on the one before. Reading ended in a headache most days. She thought it was a willpower problem. Then a focus problem. Then she dropped out of college.
She walked into doorframes. She walked into a sliding glass door once. When her provider had her walk down the hall as a test, the drift was visible. The provider found a palsy in one eye. Her muscles had been compensating for years, pulling her neck and her gaze toward the ground.
Desiree got the glasses.
She is markedly less clumsy now. The reading is easier. The chronic low-grade anxiety she had carried as long as she could remember dissipated in the appointment chair.
She drove an hour to do this interview. She is twenty-six.
The line she keeps coming back to is the moment in the office when the anxiety lifted. She remembers thinking: oh. This is how everybody else feels.
00:00 I’m Desiree Cushing. I’m 26 and I drove an hour to be here to do this interview today. I had difficulty reading since high school.
00:10 I thought it was a willpower issue or a mindset issue. Eventually, I thought that it was a focus issue.
00:17 I didn’t realize that my eyes were also playing a role in my inability to read. My eyes would go in and out of focus.
00:25 I would turn the next page and have forgotten all of the information because I was trying so hard to read the letters,
00:32 and usually reading ended in a headache. My muscles were compensating for my eyes, and so they were influencing where my neck would go.
00:40 When this became more noticeable, I slacked off a lot. I was a student who would not be able to really focus on the book unless I was very interested.
00:49 And then in college, I actually ended up dropping out. I couldn’t absorb information. I actually have a palsy in one of my eyes
00:57 that the provider found. And so what I was constantly doing was looking at the ground and I ended up like falling, tripping, running into things.
01:07 I would be like walking and put my shoulder into the doorframes without noticing, or like on the rare occasion, walking to
01:14 a sliding glass door. Since I’ve gotten my glasses, I have been markedly less clumsy or prone to injury. I would drift while I was walking.
01:25 That’s one symptom that has greatly improved — my provider makes you walk down the hall to test that out. It was night and day. My anxiety has been a lot better.
01:35 I’m calmer than I ever have noticed myself being before. I have had low grade anxiety for as long as I can remember.
01:45 I remember when I was in the appointment that anxiety dissipated and I, I just had this moment where I was like, oh,
01:54 this is how everybody else feels.
