That was nearly 20 years ago. I had a decent string of roles Off Broadway, and I could say I lived the dream. But as I recently stood at the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, I realized I could no longer read the signs. Was I at 43rd or 45th Street?

Squinting, I tried the flow-of-traffic trick, but I’d gotten turned around. Was I on Fifth, which goes down, or Sixth Avenue, which goes up? Everything around me was an increasingly panicked blur.

The morning rush of Midtown swirled around me as I tried to get my bearings. In that moment of disorientation and anxiety, power-walking New Yorkers bumping into me from what felt like all sides, I took a picture of the street sign with my phone and blew it up. I still couldn’t tell where I was.

You are vulnerable when you can’t see. I’m ashamed to admit that I — of all people — could never bear watching a blind person feel her way down the sidewalk in New York City. Now I was that person.

No amount of quick thinking could reverse the truth. My good eye had gone bad. I had one last hope that I dreaded: another cataract surgery.

It’s a peculiar thing to be able to re-experience a childhood trauma as an adult. The terror is the same. The growing sense of claustrophobia is just the same. But now, I had nothing left to lose. I couldn’t see, and an unsuccessful surgery would mean only that I would continue not to see.

When I entered the operating room, I had 20/200 vision, which meant I saw the world through frosted glass, a blur of shapes and colors. I could no longer read or fill out the medical release forms. I was blind.