Knowing the couple was, for me, more than a random meeting on a flight, but an invitation to rethink what it means to see
It was a long flight to Rome. Outside, the night was silent and inside the plane, the passengers straightened between the Pisolini, the hum of short conversation and the shine of the films on the small screens. It would be another boring flight that would seem to end. I settled on the armchair and next to it was a beautiful couple who seemed to be honeymoon. A few minutes later, I have already pulled the speech and time has started to run lighter. Let’s talk about travel, curiosity, of life in general. I, wanting to be polite, kept my neck towards Corniceswho was by my side, like those who make a point of looking at each other while he speaks, when he tells me:“You don’t have to talk to me by turning my neck, you can look forward! So much … I’m blind!” The comment disarmed me. I smiled, a little embarrassing, and at that moment I realized that I was in front of someone who saw life slightly.
Immersion in the dark
Marcos’ story begins with congenital glaucoma, a rare and aggressive disease that forced him to face surgical interventions from the first days of life. He grew up with the hypothesis, but still with a certain autonomy. At the age of 20, the disease began to advance. He had already lost the vision of the left eye years before, after a detachment of the retina during a football match. He was left to the other’s sight, the only functional. It was then that, at 22, he had to make the most difficult decision of his life.
“It was to operate and try to preserve the little I still had, running all the risks involved or letting the blindness come gradually. I decided to operate. I was always able to try, to risen, but the intervention caused bleeding. I slept and I woke up blindly.” As he removed the swab, he immersed himself in a void. “It was like falling into a black hole”Often. But at the bottom of this hole, the voices still arrived – from the world of those who saw.
Two other surgical interventions arrived in an attempt to reverse bleeding. Nobody worked. Blindness was definitive. He remained for him to reappear to live. Marcos didn’t take long to get up. He searched for mobility and computer courses, revoked to walk alone on the streets, to use adapted technology. He discovered the readers of Screen, apps and above all he discovered people of his age who live similar situations. There he realized that it was possible to be young and blind at the same time. A year later, he was already employed. “The second chapter started”summarizes.
Blindness as fiction
From there, he understood that life without vision would also have been a life of imagination. “Blindness is a constant fiction. For all the time I am taking images, from the colors and shapes I have seen. In dreams, this has already been delivered to me naturally, I don’t need to strive”. However, there are limits to this invention. In front of the mirror, it is not recognized. You need someone’s gaze to find out about you: how old she has had, how your face is, what the remaining time marks. His self -image is reconstructed from the words of others.
In dreams, the border is even more curious. Often he finds himself walking with the stick, but with the complete vision. As if the unconscious did not separate the memory and the absence, but put them side by side. And the colors, always kept, remain alive. The blue of the sky, the red of a shirt, the yellow of a summer afternoon – everything remains intact in its memory.
Faces invented
The imagination is not limited to reflection itself. Marcos also creates the faces of the people they know after blindness. “My mind works as an artificial intelligence. From a voice, I already build a face, a body and dressed for that person. If I have physical contact, how to hold back on my arm, the prompt still improves.”. Therefore, it transforms voices into images, tones in expressions, silhouettes. The absence of vision becomes constant invention.
Every day and invisible challenges
Marcos’ daily life combines humor, resilience and obstacles. Organizes its wardrobe with accessibility applications and plays to say it Renata It’s yours Personal designer. Technology gives you autonomy, but does not cancel the challenges of life in a city that are not very prepared for those who do not see. Irregular Sidewalk, confused public transport, veiled prejudice, all this weighs again.
There are fun stories, such as the time that his stick has involuntarily raised the dress of a woman on a escalator. Even painful episodes, for example, when a subway employee threatened him from prison due to a temporarily blocked ticket, does not worry about his disability. “The difficult thing is not to be blind, but to face the blindness of others”reflect.
The love that lights up
It was precisely in the subway that Renata entered her life. He walked behind him, he offered help and from that simple gesture a friendship was born who would soon become love. Over time, he understood that even being next to Marcos was facing prejudices masked by looks and comments. There were those who saw her as a caregiver, never as a partner. Just like those who doubted Mark’s autonomy.
But for her, every trip and every day next to him showed differently: what love is not measured in the absence, but in the way of being present. It is Marcos who prepares travel itineraries, with weighted details, to make it smile. For Renata, each floor is also a declaration of silent affection.
Sample
For Marcos, traveling is not just seeing landscapes. It’s feeling. The aroma of a market, the music that echoes from a square, the plot of historic stones under the tired feet. “If you were only traveling, open the Instagram“jokes. For him, it is to try every place with all the senses. Which does not notice directly, receives in descriptions of Renata or even application. Life, insists, would be frustrating only if it were made of viewing.
Invisible lessons
Blindness has not made it a flag or a martyr. It was fallen, then I start again. He threw him down, made him go up and, in the gesture of reproaching, found humility as a company. He has learned that no one supports himself forever and that freedom, for none of us, lasts only until the next corner. Renata confirms: Living with Marcos is learning every day that seeing does not depend on the eyes, but on the way we connect to the world.
The meeting with the couple was, for me, more than an informal meeting on a flight, but an invitation to rethink what it means to see. Because the vision, I discovered, is not just a meaning: it is presence, listening, touch and sharing. Marcos taught me, on that journey and in every gesture of its history, that life is invisible, but not for this, less clear.
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
