Sight is a slow burn. The ability to see—literally and metaphorically—comes with time, if at all.
In my case, it came in third grade. I had no idea that I couldn’t see. Like most nearsighted nine-year-olds, I wondered why our teacher couldn’t focus the overhead projector, or why no one else was squinting at the whiteboard, or why, when it was my turn to solve math problems with a Vis-à-Vis marker, I’d panic because I couldn’t make out the numbers. I finally told my mom why I couldn’t go to school anymore: everything was too blurry. Days later, I left the eye doctor in awe. Trees had leaves. All of them had individual leaves that I could see outside the car window on the way home. I still hated math, but my new blue metallic glasses were windows to the world.
That’s how seeing starts—with awe. Over the next few months, I collected details. No feature was left unchecked. Ridges in mountain ranges, crevices on the moon, feathers on birds, dimension in clouds, buttons on shirts, expressions on people’s faces all caught my eye. I noticed depth and texture as if I had never been to this planet. To see something is to consider the possibility that it might not be. And yet, it is.
By middle school, I graduated from glasses to contact lenses—a tale as old as time, or at least, as old as modern optical science. Now I had peripheral vision, too. Still squinting out of habit, I paid closer attention to my surroundings. Why do some painted walls have different textures than others? Why is a lake’s surface so glasslike in the morning? Why do birds arrange themselves in geometric shapes when they fly? To even ask such questions, my 360-degree universe had to be in focus. My world had to be previously blurred. With complete clarity, one’s sense of awe can be applied to anything.
Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a condition that basically promises vision decline. And mine did. My first driver’s license was labeled with an impairment: requires visual aids. By that time, putting little plastic circles on top of my eyeballs every morning in order to see clearly became so second nature that I’d often forget that I couldn’t see naturally. In a different era, Social Darwinism would likely rule me out alongside 30 percent of the world’s population with nearsightedness (a condition that’s 20 percent more common than my left-handedness). I always saw that as kind of cool, lucky even. To see well, one has to understand the context of their condition.
Throughout my twenties, the steady changes continued. The leaves lost their clear edges (Now, I know my vision is faltering if the edges of a tree’s leaves start to blur again.) I could barely see the second line of letters on the visual acuity test, and I started seeing small floating squiggly lines when looking at a blank canvas, like the sky or a white wall. What the hell is that? My eye doctor performed his routine checkup and said this was normal. Normal? But what is that? He took out a chart of the eye and proceeded to tell me about vitreous gel. For myopic individuals, the abnormal shape of the eye makes it easy for breaks to form in the vitreous, which causes the squiggles I was seeing. Oh yeah, I have those every day! my dad told me. My hypochondria was soothed. Conducting light research is proven to help you see better.
I often wonder if myopic individuals have different brain patterns. Studies have revealed that nearsighted people have difficulty with spatial awareness (guilty) and shown possible correlation between myopia and a higher IQ (I don’t make the rules). Figuratively, to be myopic means to lack foresight, or to have a narrow viewpoint. I’d like to think that the nearsighted population trends toward being mentally farsighted, which may be true for some but not for all. I tapped into the mind’s eye around twenty-seven, but my other two eyes continue to worsen beyond the qualifications of legal blindness. My sagacity sharpens while my world continues to blur. One has to work with what one has.
When I return to my blurred world upon taking out my contacts before bed, I notice a sense of relief. It’s different from the relief I feel when I put my contacts back on in the morning. Maybe it’s a withdrawal from visual stimulation, a checking out from my physical surroundings. It’s part of a daily routine I’ve known since I was nine—seeing the leaves, assessing their edges, checking my vision, taking out my contacts, and starting fresh again the next day. Awe, then blur, then back to awe. To see is to repeat the ritual again and again and again.
