The director of CBVH had authorized Linda and Sue to come out for evaluation and services, but after the girls did as much as they could for me, it was time for the next stage of services for me from the state of New York.
Tensions were high in our home, and it was extremely uncomfortable living with Ann. My primary counselor’s name at CBVH was Bonnie. She suggested that I go to a school for the blind and visually handicapped in Albany, New York. They would teach me more blind skills, all expenses paid. It was two hundred miles away from our home, and I could only come home every other weekend, on the bus, back and forth.
Somehow, I ended up with an agreement to go, and it was an extremely hard, lonely five months. Unbeknownst to me, God was designing a huge period of growth in my life. At the time, my perception of my life was just getting worse, as I did not want to be there in Albany in the first place. Then, to top it off, when I came home, I came to find out that, at home, I was no longer wanted there.
Ann was trying to let me know that with every weekend that I arrived back home. As I was getting home Friday evening, and then getting a bus back to Albany on Sunday night, this did not give me much time to connect with the kids. I missed them so much. It was so lonely there in Albany, two weeks at a time.
The boarding house that I was staying with was a family of very heavy drinkers, with me having three years of sobriety at that time. I had nothing in common with them, and they were trying to taunt me with drinks.
I spent my time there in the bedroom, outside of meals and going to school for classes. I was feeling very depressed, lonely, and down and out. I was feeling helpless and hopeless again. I even got to the point of calling my pastor from church from time to time. I was in a place of self-centered pain and loneliness.
Then God started his plan by placing people directly into my path. There were long times between my classes. I wandered the halls looking for something to do. As I was trailing the wall, I accidentally bumped into a woman who was also blind.
I said that I was sorry, and we started chit-chatting. I told her that I was blind, and I asked her how her sight was. She said, “I am blind too.” I asked, “Can I ask why?” She said, “I witnessed a murder.”
I said, “You witnessed a murder? What happened?”
She said, “They held me down and poured lye in my eyes so that I couldn’t testify as an eyewitness.”
Well, that was a shock to my system, as I thought I was unique with my eye damage. Next, in the lunchroom, there was a nineteen-year-old kid named Chris, coming back from the weekend, the same as I was. We started talking with each other. He informed me that he had diabetes, and, because of his disease, he had only one arm, and many of his toes were missing on both feet.
When I asked him about his blindness, he said that the diabetes made the vitreous fluid in his eyes solid white fluid, just like milk, so that he could not see through it. I asked him if the doctors could replace that with clear fluid, and he said that they tried once, but it was too painful to do, so he would rather stay blind.
I then asked him what his class was today. He said, “I was supposed to have mobility today, but I cannot, because I got drunk over the weekend, then fell down the stairs and broke my only wrist.”
Well, I started wondering what was going on, as my self-pity seemed to start shrinking a little. The next person I ran into was a man who reminded me of a character in one of my favorite TV shows. We started exchanging stories, and I asked him how he went blind.
He said that he owned a bar in Florida. In an argument in the bar, he turned his back to walk away. Then the guy called his name. When he turned around, the guy shot him in the face, blinding him in both eyes.
It seemed that I was not alone in this world of blind troubles.
However, the person who had the biggest impact on me was a beautiful-sounding girl in a wheelchair. Her name was Sue, and she was blind. We started talking, and we found out that we were the same age. I told her what had happened to me, as she had asked me first. Then I asked her what happened to her.
She said, “When I was sixteen, I broke up with my boyfriend. As I was walking out of his house, he shot me in the back with a shotgun and paralyzed me from the waist down.”
I said, “Did that make you blind also?”
She said, “No, after spending time in the hospital for my recovery, my parents were taking me home in their car. They placed me in the front seat and put my wheelchair in the trunk.”
“Then, on the way home, we got into a head-on collision, so I lost both eyes in the broken windshield of the car.”
This story made me upset, and somehow, she could sense that. She then seemed to try to comfort me and said, “Dan, don’t worry, because everything will work out for both of us. I am going to be a secretary, and you are going to be just fine.”
I came to find out that she lived over fifty miles away from the school in Kingston, New York, and had transportation back and forth to school in the back of a station wagon every day.
I have strongly come to believe that there are no coincidences anymore. Because, for a place I did not want to go to, and a place I did not want to be, God sure made an enormous impact in my spirit with these people.
As I look back on it now, it seemed like God was communicating with me in his own way.
Coming Home to Learn
In Albany, I may have sharpened some skills of Braille and mobility that Sue and Linda had already given to me in the basic training, but I do not believe that this was why I went there. Looking back, I believe that God had placed me there for a different purpose: to help get me out of my self-pity.
I believe that God designed for me to go to this school to meet the people that he had placed in front of me, people who helped change the direction of my life. I was too self-centered to consider that other people might have problems, as I thought that no one could possibly have life as bad as I had it, until God stepped in, apparently at the right time, because God only knows that I am only going to do things for my own reasons.
This is why I can call it “God’s design,” as he imparts my motivations for any changes. At this point, I had three years in the AA program, with the twelve steps and basic principles working for me. I began to evaluate where and who I was in this part of my life.
I suddenly realized that no one was going to do for me what I needed to do for myself. I then acknowledged that my dependency on Ann, as it stood, was not a good, healthy relationship for her, our children, or myself.
I was in a victim role, and I realized that Ann was my higher power, as she had control of my daily living.
I knew I needed to change that, and I thank God for the AA program and the fellowship with other AA members that slowly guided me toward the God of my understanding.
Another thing that I realized is that “self-pity” could become a way of life if I fall into the victim role.
I realized that my life was in bondage, but the bondage was my way of thinking.
I never felt worthy to think outside of my little “boxed world,” until the unconditional love, hope, and acceptance deeply affected me in the AA program. This gave me a clear picture to come out of denial and started giving me the courage and strength to change.