The very first thing I see when I open my eyes is white. A glaringly white ceiling looks down on me, so bright
that I can’t bring myself to stare at it. I turn to the window, only to meet the even more glaring sunlight. I close my eyes
for a minute, and all my other senses activate. I can hear the soft hum of the aircon, a soft purr that, if I listen long
enough, seems to resonate throughout my entire room. I feel the cold that had settled in my room throughout the night,
and as I become aware of it, there seems to be a breeze that causes me to burrow under the covers. I try to listen to the
other sounds of life beyond the hum of the aircon, and I hear my mom’s laughter on the phone and the clanking of
utensils downstairs. I open my eyes again, and the world is still a splash of color. A world of vague shapes and glaring
colors, colors that, strangely enough, can also seem so muted at the same time.
For half my life, I have lived in this kind of world. In third grade, I always sat at the back of the classroom because of the sit-in-alphabetical-order rule and the sit-by-height rule. I loved it back there because I would count how many of my classmates were talking to their seatmates instead of listening to the teacher. I could see them passing notes, whispering to seatmates, and playing MASH in their notebooks, instead of diligently taking down notes. I could see their heads nodding off, as opposed to my eager nodding at each utterance of the teacher. But in the middle of the year, the white words on the dark green blackboard started to blur together, and I could read them by squinting a little. Then I had to squint a lot. Until I couldn’t read it by squinting anymore. So I went to see the doctor and I got my first pair of glasses with a grade of 175 and 200 per eye. Since then, I would always request to be transferred to the front row, and I absolutely hated being in the back row.
From the first day I got them, I never took the glasses off except during baths and before sleeping. All aspects of my life have been affected by these glasses. Even my identity has been affected, as I never look like myself without my glasses on. My sense of fashion has also been affected, as I prefer the classic, conservative look, as this is the only style that will truly fit my frames. In short, as I lived with my glasses, my life revolved around having these specs.
I was never an athletic person, and maybe having glasses was the reason behind this. In the same year that I got my glasses, I played kickball while wearing them, and in the process got hit in the face by the ball. For the first time, I felt the excruciating pain of having a ball hit my face and this foreign object that seemed to dig into the canals of my nose, digging into the bone with such intensity that it almost made me cry. This was probably why any sport that posed the threat of having a ball hit me in the face, like soccer, for instance, became one that I would never play, although I would always justify it with many different reasons: “I will never play volleyball because my hands hurt too much,” and “I will never play soccer because I have no coordination with my feet.”
But if there was one sport I didn’t give up, it was basketball. I would play with my friends during the lunch break, dribbling, passing, shooting, and scoring until the bell rang, and I would head back to the classroom with my skirt slightly dirty, the back of my blouse soaking wet, sweat dripping down my face, and stray hairs sticking out of my ponytail. I would make a side trip to the bathroom and splash water on my face, walking up the stairs with my face dripping wet. The full force of the aircon would hit me, and I would sigh in pure bliss as my face would cool and my entire body would relax against the cold, sometimes freezing, temperature of our classroom. For once, I felt normal, as though I was just like anyone else who just loved the sport and never let anything --not even bad eyesight-- become a hindrance to it.
But there were times when I was acutely aware that I was not like everyone else that just loved the sport. Much as I wanted to ignore it, my bad eyesight was a hassle sometimes. I once tried to play without my glasses because they were beginning to slide down my face. The minute I took them off, everyone looked the same in our orange and white uniform, of which I could only see orange. I figured everyone out by looking at the length of their hair and their height, and I thought I had it made until they yelled, “Grid! You passed to the enemy!” And all I could do was laugh sheepishly and offer my apologies. All I knew was I was passing to this orange figure with short hair.
Throughout time, my vision deteriorated even more, its grade increasing by 50 or more each year. It was later on compounded by astigmatism, the level of which is still steadily rising with the actual grade of each eye. As each year passed, the world continued to blur together, colors merging, lines disappearing, figures hazing. People’s faces consisted of blurry eyes, noses, and lips. Then the eyes became slits, the noses became bumps, the lips became pink protuberances with a slight contour. From slits, the eyes became lines, the noses shadows, and the lips a soft pink almost blending with the rest of the face. Until finally, faces were nothing but slight dents and protuberances on a flesh plane. Words on a blackboard used to be letters that were somewhat blurred, then jumbled together. The words became squiggles, then lines as the curves disappeared, then finally, the words faded into nothingness, sinking into the deep green of the blackboard. Things seemed to be disappearing before my very eyes as time went by.
And yet, as everything began to disappear, some new things began to emerge. I could see intricate snowflake-like patterns in the traffic lights and streetlights, lights that came to me as perfect circles. Each pattern was different, and each light was so glaring that even if I closed my eyes, I could see the spots dancing in my mind. The colors of neon billboards would all blur together, and yet I could see some sort of intricate pattern there too, and a new shade of green or blue or red would reveal itself to me. I could see the way the light from a fluorescent bulb would descend into the room, forming a slight sheen and mist that would slowly disappear as it reached the ground. Sometimes, I could even see the pixels of the TV or the computer, but most of the time, the colors on the screen would just be so smooth, it was like looking at the glossy reprint of a painting on canvas.
I would console myself with these thoughts sometimes, that I am able to see a different beauty in colors that others cannot see. My friends stare at me bewilderedly when I take of my glasses and I whisper, “Cool… colors…” for they cannot understand just what I see. The strict shapes and forms disappearing and blending into various colors, both distinct and indistinguishable from each other, like the colors that the artist has mixed together on a palette.
Sometimes, though, the self-pity kicks in, and I wish that I would get my eyesight back. I cannot see myself in the mirror; I have to be an inch away to see my face clearly. I can’t read in the proper position --with the book held in my lap or a good distance away from my body-- because the words disappear into the pages; I have to read it six inches away from my face. I can’t watch TV without my glasses because I have no idea what’s happening. And if I leave my glasses somewhere and forget where exactly I placed them, I can’t even find them because they disappear into the blend of colors I see. I have to call for help whenever this happens, and when it turns out that it was just on my bed, I feel like the dumbest and most helpless creature around.
But then again, I think about the implications my eyesight has on my life. While others can see distinct shapes, lines, forms, letters, and all the other things that seem to define life and the things around us, I see colors. Just colors. In my world, color is the only thing I have. And maybe, this isn’t such a bad thing.
My parents are seriously thinking of putting me under laser surgery and restoring my vision to near perfection. This is fine with me, because I think that half a lifetime of wearing glasses is enough to influence my entire life, and that the way I see the world with 20/20 vision will still be the same as the way I saw it when I was blind as a bat: a world of color.
I’ve always dreamed of having glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, but I never had them because I wouldn’t be able to see them anyway.
Maybe this year, my ceiling will be filled with stars.