Love and First Sight(52)
“I don’t know. Earlier on.”
“Do I have a responsibility to tell you all my flaws?” she snaps. “Should I have also told you that my closet is a mess? That I broke my mom’s vase when I was five years old and never told her? If you put all your flaws on display right up front, no one will ever like you.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“It’s absolutely true, and that’s why no one has ever liked me before. Because I wear my biggest flaw right on my face. It’s not like I set out to trick you, Will.”
“Your biggest flaw? So you do think it’s an important part of who you are?”
“Well, of course—”
But I interrupt. “That’s what I don’t understand. If it’s that big a deal, why wouldn’t you tell me about it?”
She doesn’t answer.
Eventually I ask, “But what about when I was getting the operation? Didn’t you know that I would eventually be able to see you?”
“I hoped you would eventually be able to see me, Will.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“I hoped you would be able to see me for who I am inside. I believed that you were different from everyone else. You didn’t judge me for my appearance.”
“So you thought I was that shallow? That just knowing about your birthmark would’ve ruined our friendship?”
“I just… didn’t want to risk messing anything up between us.”
A piece finally falls into place in my mind. “So the birthmark… that’s why you’ve always been bullied?”
“Yes,” she says quietly.
“And that’s why you didn’t want to try out for the announcements? That’s why you didn’t think anyone would vote for you?”
“Yes.”
“Did it never occur to you that as your close friend, I might want to know this key bit of information so I could be there for you?”
She’s silent, so I continue, “If you had just told me this one thing, I would’ve been able to understand. I would’ve understood why you thought no one liked you. I would’ve understood why you thought no one would want to date you. I obviously would’ve tried to convince you otherwise on all these things, but at least I would’ve known where you were coming from. These are terrible burdens you’ve had to carry all by yourself, Cecily. I was trying to be your friend. You know what friendship means? It means sharing the burden. You didn’t have to carry it all by yourself.”
She still doesn’t answer.
“Well?” I say.
Finally she says, “When I first found out you were blind, it was kind of… refreshing to meet someone who didn’t look at me and see my birthmark first and foremost. You saw other parts of me instead. And I liked that. I just allowed myself to enjoy it. I couldn’t predict we would become this close. But after we kept hanging out, at a certain point, yeah, I felt like it had gone too far, that if I told you then, it would seem like I had taken advantage of your blindness by not telling you earlier.”
When she says those words out loud, taken advantage of your blindness, I realize that’s the other piece of why I’m so offended. It’s not just knowing that she might have thought I was so shallow that I couldn’t handle it, it’s that she took advantage of my blindness because it happened to be more convenient. Why go through the trouble of telling the blind guy your most significant physical characteristic if you can simply allow him to stay ignorant? Why risk filling him in on what everyone else already knows when you can just leave him in the dark?
Cecily says she believed I was different from everyone else. Well, I believed she was different, too. I believed she was the one person I could really trust. Like she might even be the one sighted person I could trust enough to be in a relationship with. But now she’s thrown that all away, crumpled it up, and stomped on it.
I step out of the car and slam the door shut. I navigate back toward the school, hearing my cane click-click-click on the pavement as her car’s idling engine fades behind me. I blink. I’m not sure if I’m blinking back tears or if I’m just blinking because my eyes feel dry.
As I walk, my mind races with questions. Do people have a duty to disclose what they look like to their blind friends? If you know someone who can’t see, is there some moral obligation to tell him about any flaws in your appearance early on? Like, Hey, I know we just met recently, but in case you ever start feeling attracted to me, you should know that for whatever reason, society wouldn’t say I’m beautiful?
Because that’s all it is, right? Society or the media or whoever says people should look a certain way, and the more you deviate from that, the less beautiful you are.
But there’s obviously something deeper going on with attraction, right? Something beyond just what society says is beautiful or not? Like, I was attracted to Cecily without ever having seen her clearly with my eyes. Because I know her. I know what she’s like inside. I know how she expresses herself and the way she loves to take photos and watch sunrises, and that’s what I’m attracted to.
Or at least, I thought I knew her.
The fact is, not saying what is true is the same as saying something untrue. It’s a lie of omission. Cecily considered telling me the truth about herself and then decided, no, she enjoyed having a friend who didn’t know what she looked like. She decided that exploiting my blindness was the best way to make me stick around, the best way to hold on to my companionship. Basically, she used my disability so she could feel better about herself.