Eyes Meet

Chapter 39 - The Missing Piece

"Are you okay in there?"

"Yeah, I'll be out shortly"

I responded to Melissa while the water was still running into the sink. I just took my morning shower, which was refreshing but still, not as calming as a bath would be. I really needed a bath though but as for now, I just had to put up with what the hospital offered.

It wasn't that bad either, considering it was a first class suite ward Melissa paid for.

I looked in the mirror as it was just right in front of me, and there was nowhere for me to run since I found myself keep staring in it just to see my own face since 2 days ago. I didn't know a mirror could be so tempting before. It kept calling for me to come and take a look at my own reflection.

I couldn't really sleep after I undergone the corneal tissue transplant. Even though I had my wife with me on the bed, hugging me to sleep, my brain didn't let me. It was so frustrating to have so many thoughts in my head all at once, and even Melissa's arms couldn't help me to get my most needed rest. I was just tired. I was so tired to think.

Everything didn't seem right after I fixed my eyes. My brain kept telling me that I shouldn't have done the procedure at the first place, and surprisingly, even my heart now got infected by that idea. It was the first time in my whole life that my brain and my heart were in the same room, toasting champagne and having a good conversation together.

There was nothing else left in my positive thoughts that could help me with it. Jisoo did remind me the other day when I was still blind, that everything had its own dark side. Everything. She talked about seeing things, people, the world in a completely different way when I got my eyesight back. Now I understood what she really meant.

Mum was wrong. She had been scared all her life to the thoughts of freeing me to explore the world just because I was blind. She had been protecting me from this cruel world that she was so frightened of, and that felt so wrong to me now as I finally could see the world the way she did.

She shouldn't be scared back then, she should be scared now when her daughter was no longer blind.

Because all I felt now was fear.

If people asked me what were the dark sides of being blind, I would say it was just the extra effort I needed to put and I found them physically tiring sometimes.

It was the effort to listen better, touch better, feel better, taste better, smell better. Doing those really squeezed my brain to work harder so that I could understand better or at least, same with normal people could.

The struggle to hear footsteps just to know how many people were around me. The struggle to taste just to know if it was chicken or beef that I was chewing. The struggle to touch to know which clothes that I would need to wash by hands or I could just put them in the washing machine. The struggle to smell to know if it was cayenne pepper or paprika powder.

But even with that kind of extra effort, I still had peace.

Because I feared and worried less.

And what scared me when I had my eyesight back? Everything.

There were dark sides to finally see things through naked eyes and I was already consumed by them even though it only had been 2 days. I guessed this was the right time for mum to protect me, because I never felt this scared before.

Things were just too direct if that made any sense to anyone. Everything that I had in mind, that I used to imagine, were actually not the way I expected them to be. It got me thinking that eyes weren't just the windows to the soul. They were windows to everything!