Focusing my Superpower

I see like a camera sees.

Which means I don’t see how other people see.

For a long time, I thought this was a disadvantage.

I was born cross-eyed. Though I had three surgeries when I was young to correct it cosmetically, my brain never figured out how to fuse the separate images from my two eyes into one.

This means I don’t have depth perception. I can’t catch, I often run into things, and I hate to drive. (And don’t even get me started about 3D movies!)

I always knew the things I couldn’t do well because of my eyes, but it took me a long time to notice what I could do better because of my eyes – and how these strengths became a huge part of who I am.

Using a camera always came naturally to me. Now I understand that is because I see with one eye at a time, just like a camera creates a picture with one lens.

I also have the advantage of being able to switch eyes, which makes it much easier to follow the action and frame the shot when I’m looking through a viewfinder.

A few years ago, I learned about vision therapy, which can help people with binocular vision like me learn how to see in stereo. I was curious about how it would work, and even made an appointment with an eye doctor who specialized in this treatment to find out how it would work.

But the more I thought about it, the more I started to understand all the ways that how I see had shaped who I am.

Now I would never want to change the way I see because it would change such a fundamental part of me.

I’m Camera Kate, and I see with a superpower.

What is your superpower?