A blind-from-birth woman whose vision appeared just a few years ago has revealed what startled her the most.
“Blindness is a spectrum,” says Olivia Durant, who was legally blind from birth until just a few years ago. The Los Angeles-based woman explains on her website:
“Every blind person is not the same. I was so near-sighted I could not identify people, walk outside by myself, or watch TV.”
Olivia got her eyesight at the age of 34. After so many years of seeing only blurry shapes and silhouettes, she was finally able to see the world as it is with all of its vibrant colors. And it was a massive shock for her.
As per Unilad, Durant, an experienced public speaker, uses her Instagram page and TikTok account to break down her condition and answer questions from curious followers.
One user asked Olivia: “What was the thing that shocked you the most when you first saw it?”
To this question, she replied:
“I have to actually say, I did. I had no idea what I looked like so I would go into stores with those mirrors on the wall and I saw myself and I actually said hello to myself because I thought I was a different person.”
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Furthermore, the woman revealed she went through an identity crisis because she couldn’t recognize her own reflection in the mirror. She added:
“It’s kind of a little disturbing. Everything you knew about yourself is wrong.”
Another user asked her: “Was there one thing you were looking forward to seeing the most once you could see?”
Olivia replied:
“For me, seeing the true colors of things, because I wasn’t seeing proper color. I was seeing vague shape and color, but it was all brown-tinted, but I didn’t know that at the time. So, afterwards I was like: ‘Oh my God, like, the sky is… That’s what BLUE looks like? Are you kidding me?!'”
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In a follow-up video, the public speaker discloses that “the size and scope of things” surprised her as well, saying:
“Things where there’s a lot of information, like a concert, bar or a busy restaurant, that really threw me off a lot, because your brain can’t really take in all that information at once.
Imagine going from an 8-bit Nintendo to a PS4 overnight. It’s gonna take your brain a bit of time to adjust to that. It’s almost like getting psychic powers.”
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