When I was about 14 years old, I discovered that some Starburst jelly beans were different flavors, but they were all the exact same color of red. The problem was that there was a single flavor that I didn't like very much, so I never knew whether I would get a good flavor or a bad flavor. I finally asked my friend if she had mixed another brand in or something, and she nonchalantly told me that they were different colors. After much confusion and convincing, we ended up with 3 distinct piles of jelly beans and the conclusion that I was probably colorblind.
Later in my life, I encountered another challenge concerning color, this time an actual color blindness test given to me by my biology teacher. I didn't want to take it, but my friends convinced me to because I was the only colorblind person in class. As I expected, I failed the test.
For a while I just kind of accepted the jokes about me being colorblind and used it to make jokes myself sometimes as well. While I had never had an official diagnosis, I decided to just live as though I did.
Then, last year, I went to the optometrist for my normal glasses prescription and finally decided to ask him for sure whether or not I was colorblind. He explained that in the optometry world, they tend to stay away from the term "colorblind" and instead refer to it as "color deficiency." He told me that I did, in fact, have a mild form of color deficiency called tritanomaly. He told me that I likely have trouble seeing colors related to blue and yellow.
Color deficiency isn't necessarily the worst eye disorder one can have. It doesn't have much of an impact on my life on a day to day basis, and I'm used to my eyes seeing things the way they've always seen them. That doesn't mean that it doesn't affect me at all, however, because yeah, it's not fun not knowing what everyone else sees. In my case, my favorite color is yellow, but because one of the colors my deficiency is linked to is yellow, I'll never see it in the way it truly is. The doctor told me that there's probably much more yellow in my world, but I don't have the receptors to pick up on how common it really is.
I just wanted to spread awareness about color deficiency and how it affects people afflicted with it. Yeah, the jokes I hear are often funny in an almost-too-true kind of way, but in the end it really does bother me that I'll very likely never see the world the way everyone else does.
In conclusion, I don't say all this to be downcast. I like to think about my color deficiency as a rare thing that makes me really unique, and I do actually enjoy knowing that I get to see the world so differently from everyone else. Not only that, but I still love color, and to me, the colors I see are still beautiful. Maybe one day I'll get to see the colors normally, and I'll love those just as much as I love my own personal set of colors.
