Spectacularly Sighted

As a young girl, I was nearly obsessed with the idea of wearing glasses. The trips that my family took to get my sister new glasses made me yearn for them more and more.

The colorful and very creative ropes with charms made it all more intriguing. I soon embarked on the journey of trying ouT how glasses would look on my tiny face when I believed nobody was watching.

From slightly putting it close to my face, and looking into the mirror. I wasn’t exactly picky about whose glasses I used for my little experiment. Dad’s , Mum’s or my Sister’s.

Whenever I got caught, my quite upset mum went on to explain how I could end up with an eye infection,which eventually happened.

Although I loved the idea of wearing glasses, I also loved the idea of competing with my brother for who would wear glasses next between him and I.

Of course he won, because one day I woke up and my eyes couldn’t stay open without flinching just from the mere reflection of light.The red veins in my eyes, made it scarier than ever. This was not the way I wanted to start wearing glasses.

Soon after, I became an avid glasses wearer. The event of that day wasn’t going to repeat itself again. I wasn’t going to feel that sharp pain, and I wasn’t going to go blind. I tried to pick out stylist frames, I mean that was the point of wearing glasses right?

My glasses journey was smooth after the first incident and I was even “friends” with my optician, social media and what not. My eyes were doing great, until they weren’t.

A mini episode of what happened before, happened again, except that this one came with rashes and reactions. I had not only lost the game of sight, leaving my brother as the victor, but I had also dived in deeper than my predecessors in the glasses game.

I could hardly take my hands off my eyes, so my mum and dad suggested a checkup. There and then, it was settled. I had an eye infection, and the optician wasn’t sure about what caused it, but it was a serious thing. No!

Were they going to take out my eyes for surgery like Adaeze from primary school ?

Would I have to wear a patch like a pirate for one month ?

The Optician finally got to the part of the conversation were he drew the conclusion that my eyes needed to be distilled.

Distilled ? Like water I thought? As I sat there in the waiting room of optical clinic, I tried to distract myself from thinking of the “distillation of my eyes”.

This process, I’d rather not explain, but after that, I wasn’t meant to read anything or strain my eyes till a few hours after the distillation. In addition to that, I was sent home with an eye drop, and told to come back for checkup.

Till today, I never got to know the name of the infection, or the cause. Sometimes my eyes bothers me, and yes I’ve visited the optician again because of the same infection.

These days I forget that I was once a girl with a protruding vein in one eye. I forget that my eyes were trying to fail me.

Maybe I’m just grateful to be alive and have the gift of sight.

I’ve also learnt from this that, sometimes things look amazing from afar, but that may not exactly be the case up close.

I hope I’m privileged to have many more days of great eyesight without hitches.

Stay thankful .

Love, E . 💕