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He can see, in a manner of speaking.
Truth is, Matt Murdock is damned blind sometimes. It’s bad in crowds when the crush of people sends hundreds of signals to his overtuned senses. Even when he tries to block it out each jostle stabs his consciousness with too much information. The sweat, the cologne, the hair gel. Knowing the cause of bruises, bile. He gets that he should count himself lucky but he really doesn’t believe it when he unwittingly learns the pains and sorrows of those around him. There are times that he can’t do anything but grit his teeth and try not to let the sounds, smells, senses overwhelm him. Tens of heartbeats, all with their own rhythm, smashing together in cacophony. In those times he feels like screaming in frustration. Instead, he answers affirmatively to the inevitable ‘are you okay?’ and tries not to trip over anything. The cane and what it stands for dictates a wide berth. Still, it gets pretty bad, and it’s then that he knows his limitations all too clearly.
He still can’t work out the touchscreen Foggy got him for Christmas, and he loves it, he really does, but boy is he glad Foggy can’t tell if he’s lying when Matt says it’s going great. The phone blares out at inopportune times and in the early days, he so often accidentally dials the wrong person or deletes the wrong message. He knows that plenty of people, blind or not, get along with their phones just fine, but he doesn’t. Each time something goes wrong he resists the urge to hurl it at the nearest wall. For one, a bystander would be surprised at the accuracy at which the phone smashes against its target. More importantly, it would be Bad. He likes the phone, or so he keeps reminding himself.
His heightened senses aren’t always a good thing. He hates being touched. Or the way people touch him. There are different kinds. Like when someone grabs him, as they often do, to drag him around from place to place. He wants to extricate himself, but chooses not to. His father taught him better manners. So he pastes on a smile and tries not to flinch at the sudden contact, while his skin crawls under the fingers around his elbow and he does his best to not stumble all over the place. The nails alight like pins on his arm and everything is too much, too there, and he ends up needing that arm if only they’d manage to let him hold them. Others reach for him gingerly like he will break apart at the slightest push. It’s like when he reaches out for a handshake and the recipient clearly thinks he'll break him if they grip his hand too hard. He won’t. Foggy gets it; others rarely do. Matt’s not sure how much he’d believe him now, though.
Sleep is... difficult. It’s difficult because he can’t get his mind to stop telling him things. To stop noticing. To stop hearing the sound of the ticking clock upstairs, the sound of the watch next door, the drip of the faucet downstairs. Not to mention the baby crying, the TV blaring, the bed creaking, the paint peeling, the bird squawking, the fire crackling, the dog barking, the pipes groaning, the guitar playing, all of this. He can’t turn it off, as much as he begs his mind to. Late at night, when another hour crawls by with no more hope at sleep than the last, he often thinks it would be easier just to not see anything. A world on fire isn’t much use when he can’t put out its flames, even when he closes his eyes and wills it deeply. Sleep takes effort, but at least the glasses hide his insomnia the next morning.
So yeah. He can see, in a manner of speaking. Still, in some ways, it doesn’t make things any easier.