She picked an angry, hurting, awkward teenager out of the chorus room when I transferred in 10th grade and, for some reason unknowable, chose to be my friend. I could not have ever known how lucky I was.
There are times where I quite literally would not have survived without her. There are times we have saved each other, even when we had to part to do it.
Sometimes life is a knock-down-drag-around in the most dispiriting, seemingly unending way. Sometimes it keeps dealing you one hard hand after another.
But Kandi is someone I can genuinely say I admire, someone who inspires me with her fortitude, her perseverance, and the enormous, steady warmth of her heart.
So many of us wear glasses. We know just how much it sucks to have shitty eyes, and they get worse every year. You can’t go out in the rain and splash around, swimming is more trouble than it’s worth half the time, and god help you if you drop your glasses.
Originally posted by brick-a-brak
But it’s gotten much worse than that. I’ve had a front row seat to Kandi’s worsening vision for the last several years. It hurts, watching as her eyes fail and steal from her the things she loves, the hobbies and the passions and even, more and more, the necessities.
We’re not rich people. Not even remotely. We were once, very briefly, almost making it. But things always seem to fall through, don’t they? But we keep on. We scrape our way back up to the cliff edge.
Unfortunately that arduous climb doesn’t leave a lot of financial slack for things like eye surgery. Kandi’s astigmatism has always meant certain limitations. Too much light is hours of nasty headache. Glasses are breathtakingly expensive because they require special lenses.
And I can’t tell you how  exhausting it is just trying to make rent together. To keep ourselves fed. To keep our cat fed (and she feeds out hearts.) The price of Lasik eye surgery is just so far beyond our financial reach it’s the kind of frustration that sparks tears, but there’s no point in the sob.
Kandi’s eyesight is failing, more and more rapidly as the months pass. I genuinely dread how bad it will be in even a year’s time. The good news is this surgery could correct her vision and give her, quite literally, in so many ways, a whole new lease on life.
The hard part is we can’t do it ourselves. Believe me, we wish we could. But when the cost of surgery is a quarter of a year’s salary, it’s just so impossible as to seem like a fairy tale.
$4500 is a lot to ask, and believe me we know it. There’s quite honestly a place in both of us that doesn’t expect much of anything to come of this, it’s such a big ask. But we’re so deep in the hole on options, it would be worse than foolish to not try this.
It would be giving up hope.
So if you can, please. Donate what you may, and help my best friend, one of the most solid-foundation, bright and loving souls I have ever been so serendipitously lucky to know, to fix her vision. To truly see what comes next, and may it be at long last a good turn.
And if you can’t donate, please boost the signal.
We need all the help we can get.
dededos
areudirty
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
jacobvanloon
