Vignette: Sightless
Her eyes were her most valued asset.
The adage that says the eyes are the windows to one’s soul was perfectly true for her. It was always easy to tell what she feels or what she’s up to just by looking at those pools: they sparkle when she’s happy, well-up when she’s sad, squint (though often against her will) when she’s angry, and just shine when she’s excited.
She loved them not only for their beauty—they are deep-set and framed by the longest, curliest lashes that are every woman’s envy— her work, her passion and interests, all the things she loved to do required seeing. And her eyes not once failed her.
Until that night. And remembering it still gives her the creeps.
Blindness was something she had always dreaded for some reason she couldn’t understand. Whether it was a premonition, self-fulfilling prophecy (which asserts that one gravitates to a situation that he/she always imagines himself/herself to be in), or God’s cruel joke that caused such atrocity to fall on her is now the least of her concerns.
The splinters that ruined her eyes, ruined her, have already been pulled out, but her sight still refuses to return. And she had just been informed that she will forever be stuck in such condition.
“Why me? Why this?”
Perhaps, she could live without hearing. It will be a terrible world without music, without sound…but she is pretty certain she could manage. In the same way she is sure that, although with much bitterness and difficulty, she could somehow take not being able to speak or walk. But to not be able to see, and stare, and read, and watch…?
That she will be living in the dark from this day forward and for all eternity is totally unthinkable, unacceptable. But it’s the only truth her sightless state could clearly see.
“Heavens, what thing did I do so badly to deserve this fate?”
Crying: beginning today, that’s all those eyes will ever be good for.
