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I lost my eyesight and discovered my superpower

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    Do you know when you ask a child what
    her future will be like
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    and she answers that she wants
    to have super powers or just be big?
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    If you asked the younger me what my
    life would be like by the age of 16
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    I would probably answer that
    I'll be taller than my father
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    have a lot of friends,
    walk alone in the city,
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    be completely independent
    and have a long, long hair.
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    I always had a lot of imagination
    and I always loved to read.
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    Translating the letters into images
    and sound,
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    though everything was religiously silent,
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    was a way for a kid, human and muggle,
    to become special.
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    All stories made me really believe that
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    the material normal life wasn’t the only
    one and that magic existed.
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    By a certain age I started to see black,
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    my vision would start to get dark
    on the peripheral area,
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    until everything became black
    and I would get a little dizzy,
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    but my imagination was so fertile,
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    that I thought it was something magical
    that was happening to me
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    or that I was getting secret information
    from the universe.
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    I always wanted to be special
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    but while I was growing up
    I had to deal with the fact that
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    the magic world was getting each day
    more distant from me.
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    I would get inside the closet in my house
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    and I thought that if I really forgot
    about the panel at the back,
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    it would disintegrate and I would be
    able to reach Nárnia.
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    But I didn't discover a magic
    wardrobe at 8,
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    and I didn't receive my Hogwarts
    letter at 11,
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    and a satyr didn't tell me I was a
    demigod by 12.
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    So my last hope was that Gandalf would
    take me on adventure by the age of 50.
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    But, on the mean time, by the age of 13,
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    I suddenly became someone special,
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    though it really wasn’t
    the way I ask it for.
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    Actually the universe wasn't giving
    me secret information,
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    but it was dragging me into a black hole.
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    By the day of September 23rd, of 2015,
    at 7:35 in the morning,
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    I got late to my old school, as always,
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    because the city bus took too much
    time to get to my house, as always.
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    I walked in class and fell.
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    In the middle of the class,
    in front of everyone.
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    I didn’t see a backpack
    that was on the floor.
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    I got to my seat and I realized I couldn’t
    see the letters on the chalkboard.
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    I couldn’t read.
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    So I called my mom and later that day
    I went to the hospital,
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    thinking about how cool it would be
    to have a nice pair of glasses.
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    But I didn’t get them, I didn’t even
    leave the hospital that day.
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    I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus,
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    not a very creative word that means
    you have too much liquid in your brain,
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    and I’ll tell you a spoiler,
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    in my case it was because a glioma was
    formed in the passage
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    between the first and third ventricle,
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    on the base of my head.
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    This wouldn’t let the liquid
    in my brain flow,
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    it would get in and couldn’t leave,
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    what made my intracranial
    pressure very high
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    and it was damaging my optical nerves.
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    But the doctors didn’t realize that.
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    I underwent one surgery, then another,
    then another and another.
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    I was in a spiral, a cycle that every time
    me and my parents were starting to get up,
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    life would hit us and we would fall,
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    and again and again.
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    My world turned upside down and
    we were all anesthetized by the situation.
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    My magic thoughts were suddenly replaced
    by a cascade of saints and entities,
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    that were just as immaterial
    as my hope on Gandalf.
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    The problem was that the doctor felt
    certain he knew what was wrong with me.
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    But since my problem was caused by a
    completely different thing,
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    too much liquid was drained
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    so they transformed my problem
    from high intracranial pressure
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    to extremely low pressure.
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    In 8 months, I underwent 4 surgeries
    with this procedure
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    and 3 other ones to try to fix
    the mess this doctor made.
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    But the damage was done.
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    Then I could finally come back to school,
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    but I wasn’t the same anymore.
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    Life continued for normal people and
    I had lost many of the classic events
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    and teenage crisis which, honestly,
    I don’t miss.
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    I basically spent one year sleeping,
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    because since literature was taken away
    from me
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    this was the only way to sink in another
    reality in the moment I most needed.
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    But hey, I’m here today.
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    There's a sentence that says:
    I fell in a hole, came out as a giant.
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    That’s really how I feel,
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    because every time something hard happens
    to you, there’s a force,
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    even if it’s almost unnoticeable,
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    that will bring you up again,
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    and this time you will be much wiser.
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    I can concentrate and have much
    more focus on one thing now.
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    And eating, that's a completely
    different experience.
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    Everytime I eat “bolinho de chuva”
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    raindrop cakes
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    I’m immediately transported to a good and
    safe place where there are clouds of sugar
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    and cinnamon.
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    And also, when I hear or play music
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    that’s a way to escape from the
    difficulties I pass in my life.
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    And now I can remember complete Bob
    Dylan’s lyrics,
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    which is quite crazy.
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    My imagination is more intense than ever
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    because now I use it as one of the
    most important senses.
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    It’s the one who allows me to
    build a completely new world
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    based on what I have seen and on other
    sensorial channels.
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    I have to use imagination as a creative
    and logical instrument
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    to survive in this reality that relies
    too much on visual stimulation.
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    And I can do that because there’s a
    difference between looking and seeing
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    as there is between hearing and listening.
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    Seeing and listening aren't about an
    accurate capacity of your senses,
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    but they mean sensibility,
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    to understand things and have empathy
    with others,
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    so for this I think I can see better now
    than before.
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    For an example, I can see you’re
    paying attention.
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    In Greek mythology, the most
    famous seer, Tiresias, was blind,
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    because he wasn’t fooled with the traps of
    appearance and the visual world, you see?
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    I’m definitely not the 16 year old person
    I thought I would be,
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    and I don’t have the life
    I thought I would,
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    but if you ask me, would I want to go
    back in time
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    and prevent this all from happening,
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    I learnt so much that I don’t want to
    miss who I am now, the answer's no.
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    Thank you.
Title:
I lost my eyesight and discovered my superpower
Description:

Magical portals, letters from Hogwarts, adventures with Gandalf—those are just some of the literary fantasies that Maria Stockler set her sights on. However, at the age of 13, after an astonishing series of events led to the loss of her eyesight, Maria was no longer able to see the world of her dreams in the same way. In this inspired Talk, Maria shares how losing one of her senses helped her hone a new one; one that would eventually become her very own superpower. "There's a difference between looking and seeing...I think I can see better now than ever before."

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TED-Ed
Duration:
06:47

English subtitles

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