Emily Brown
A blind person who offered people the chance to ask them everything they've ever wanted to know has opened up about what they see in their dreams, and the ways in which their visions have changed over time.
The questions were answered via a post on Reddit's 'Ask Me Anything' page, where the user, who goes by the all too real handle 'Macbooksareexpensive', posted: "I’m a blind person, ask me anything."
Responses quickly flooded in, and the user explained that while they hadn't been completely blind for their entire life, they'd always lived with 'very low vision'.
Then, four years ago, they described going completely blind 'randomly'.
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Recalling the moment they lost all vision, the user wrote: "Um, it was in the middle of the day and all of my site [sic] went down by 90% and the rest was blurry by 100%, and that 10% site [sic] was used to make lights as bright as the sun apparently so that wasn’t fun. anyway I think I was blind the day after even though I thought I saw, I think my mind was playing tricks on me."
Hoping for more insight to what the blind person 'sees', one user asked: "When you sleep, how are your dreams like? Do you 'see' anything? I'm very curious, as my dreams are very visual."
The poster then responded to explain that, yes, they 'sometimes' see things in their dreams, but added: "It's not as high quality as it once was."
They continued: "I guess the brain only has some piles of memories to go off [therefore] it gets worse."
Macbooksareexpensive explained in the post that they have Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS); a condition which causes people who have lost some or all of their vision to have visual hallucinations.
They wrote: "I see random colour generated from my brain, Google [Charles] bonnet syndrome, I thibk I spelled it right lol [sic]. For me it’s not bad at all, some people with it have scary images though, can’t imagine how terrible that would feel."
The poster went on to say that they 'don't miss clear dreams', however they 'definitely' miss their vision.
They explained: "Video games really were my therapy back in the day but I can’t play them anymore."
However, they have also had some positive experiences since losing their vision, as they explained they've got a 'wonderful' dog to help them day-to-day, as well as having 'grown closer to God, and got into chess'.