grasping onto something i cannot see

prologue

i was only three years old when god decided he hated me.

i don't know what exactly i did to piss him off so much. all i know is that one day, i woke up completely blind. i remember opening and closing my eyes several times and realizing that the blackness i saw wasn't going away...and then i screamed bloody murder and woke up my entire neighborhood.

that was the first time i rode in an ambulance. certainly not the last time, though. the doctors tried explaining to my parents that i had some sort of rare condition that i couldn't pronounce if i tried. after that, they fought almost every night.

that's when i moved to my grandparents house so they could take care of me 24/7. i stayed there for 15 years. during that time, i got into several accidents that resulted in several more ambulance rides and probably hundreds of thousands of pounds of medical bills. for my 18th birthday, gram got me a seeing eye dog as a present. her name is magnolia, and she's the only person i've ever met who doesn't pity me.

now, i don't know what the fuck i'm doing. i'm nineteen and living alone with magnolia in a small flat in the middle of london. my days consist of waking up, showering, eating, and sleeping again. it's not exactly what you'd call a glamorous lifestyle.

there was absolutely no reason for me to expect that my life would change. in my head, i was doomed to be a lonely blind kid forever. but, just like how i can vaguely see the sunlight when it's shining directly in my eyes, i saw a person, just as warm and as bright, named phil lester.