Finally, I understand...

How many times have we said “I understand how you feel” to someone who is going through some torrid trying times in their lives without fully grasping the person’s plight. So often we assume we can identify with other people’s pain, even without walking as much as a meter in their shoes, talk less of a mile. Oh, how so wrong we are!

About half a year ago, I was tentatively diagnosed of having high Intraocular Pressure (IOP) – which basically means the pressure inside my eyes is higher than normal.

Yesterday, I got substantive confirmation that I had, what is known in the realm of ocular medicine as, “the silent thief of sight” and it has been playing on my mind like a broken record player ever-since.

You know how it is when you are oblivious to a cut or wound on some part of your body, suddenly you notice it and that’s when it starts to sting, when all the while it didn’t!!!? Exactly how I feel now, but much more!

Naturally, ever since I discovered I had bad eye-sight, I’ve always been protective of my eyes. Nothing provokes me to action more than someone making a move towards that region no matter how innocuous. My response is usually swift, instinctive and sometimes unsavoury to the recipient. After hearing this news, I am even more conscious, sensitive about my eyes than ever before.

At the present, there’s an irremovable nagging fear in my mind; every little twitch or itch is greeted with grave concern. Every five minutes I am looking in the mirror. I despair at the thought that one day; I will wake up to pitch blackness (or whiteness) and so it’d be till my last breath.

Now, I gaze at everything I see with re-invigorated reverence as would a new-born whose eyes have just been opened to the marvels of this world. I take it all in, sumptuously guttling all the sights around me – the straight, crooked, tiny, grandiose, pure, tainted, detailed, sketchy, beautiful, ugly… I devour them as would a hungry monster. These ailing eyes committing all to memory as much as I possibly can for all I know, there might yet come a time when the impressions in my head will be all there is left to see beneath the imposing sheet of cecity.

Maybe I now understand how it feels to be living on the edge… fearing the unknown, the unseen. So just maybe; when I say, “I understand how you feel”, I really do!