Truly On My Own

"Sarah, I can't see out of this eye..." said my roommate as we stood in the elevator waiting to arrive on the 9th floor of Tutwiler. I turned to her and watched her slowly wave her hand back and forth in front of her right eye. "Everytime my hand moves to the right, it suddenly disappears out of view!" she said. I laughed it off and told her it's probably a side affect of some kind, like what the flash of a camera does to our eyes when someone takes a picture. She reluctantly agreed and decided to wait another twenty minutes or so before really worrying if something was wrong. We reached our floor, hopped off the elevator, and made it back to our room. After about twenty minutes, my roommate's eye had shown no progress of returning back to normal. I still felt like there was nothing really serious about the situation, but she was determined there was. My roommate called her mom and explained to her every detail of what was wrong with her eye. They decided to play it safe, so her mom called their local eye doctor in Memphis and relayed the story to him. He suggested that my roommate call the eye hospital in Tuscaloosa and schedule an appointment for later that afternoon, just to check that there was no serious damage. I was very supportive to my roommate throughout her "freakout", but in the back of my mind I felt like she was taking this temporary blindness a little overboard. I offered to take her to her appointment scheduled for two that afternoon, just in case they advised her not to drive home after the tests they were going to perform. As soon as we made it to the doctor's office, I dropped her off and told her to call me when she was done so that I could come back to get her. My roommate assured me she would, shut the door, and walked inside. On my way home, I kept thinking of different possibilities of what could be wrong with her eye, or if anything was wrong with it at all. My guess was they'd send her home with a false alarm. Anyway, I made it back to the dorm room and decided to sit down and finish some homework, thinking it wouldn't be too much longer before I had to get right back in the car and go pick her up. Before I knew it, three hours had past and still no phone call from my roommate. A little worried, I kept myself busy watching TV and playing around on my computer. Finally, three and a half hours later my roommate called with bad news. Her retina was detaching from her eye. Confused and unsure at what this really meant, she explained it as the wallpaper of her eye was peeling off. The doctor told her she had six days to fix the problem or the blindness could become permanent. Not only was her surgery scheduled for 7 AM the next morning in Memphis, but the recovery time for this surgery was an estimated ten days. I was shocked. I could not believe that something this serious had suddenly occurred with no previous signs. That night, my roommate packed her bags and flew back home to Memphis. The week to follow was a difficult one for me. My roommate was my best friend in highschool, and still is my best friend in college. We are together all the time, and we even pledged the same sorority. Until that day, she had been with me every step of the way through my college experience and living on my own had been made easier with her by my side. But now, with my sidekick gone, I was truly on my own for the first time in college. The first couple of days were the hardest getting used to doing things by myself. Even sitting in my dorm room with no one else on the other side of the room and only the sound of our TV in the background was hard to adjust to. I continued to hang out with my other friends, but it wasn't the same; I'm never with them 24/7 on a normal basis like I was with my roommate. But as the week dragged on, things started to look up for me as I started getting the hang of being on my own. I would say this whole experience was a good one for me, because it taught me to rely on myself and be independent. I feel like that is what college is all about, learning to be on your own and be responsible for yourself. Maybe if my roommate's eye had never gone bad, I might have missed out on that important college lesson. Either way, now when I have to do something as simple as run to Target for some toothpaste or a notebook, I can say "Hey, I'm going to Target. See you when I get back!"