Myopia

Hyperopia was a term that, in childhood, seemed to make sense to Mia. While the technicalities of the term didn’t interest her wandering imagination, the repercussions of the condition certainly did. After complaining that she could only see things far in the distance with any kind of focus, her mother took her to an optician who quickly put a name to the issue and handed her a pretty pair of golden framed glasses.

             “You have a condition that means you can see much better when things are far away,” he told her, gentle voiced and kind in the way that only years of dealing with young children could forge. “With glasses, your shorter sight should improve, but you need to keep them on. How do they feel?”

             They felt odd, and she told him so. She could see the letters he pointed to on a distant rectangular board, could read them out one by one, but her vision felt much the same. He squeezed her shoulder and reassured her mother that it would take a number of days for things to improve, but improve they would. There was no doubt of that.

             And yet that night, disquiet in the frustration of an ever-blurry vision, Mia sat in bed and stared at her glasses, facing her in their case on her pink dresser. Why should she wear them? They hurt the bridge of her nose. Next door, she could hear the neighbours arguing again. The father – George, he was called, and the mother Lydia. They were nice people, always happy to see Mia at their door asking if Grace could come out to play when the weather was pleasant. They didn’t sound so nice when they were arguing, but that wasn’t their fault. George’s mother was dying, and through the quiet, still air of the evening, Mia could hear their anguish through the barrier of their separate windows.

             The volume rose, and so did Mia’s anxiety. Should she knock on her parents’ bedroom door? She felt too old for that, too stubborn to admit her own vulnerability. Ten years old was close to adulthood, too close to the ever-nearing period of independence she yearned for. If she went to her mother now, so close to her teenage years, would it prevent her from successfully arguing for a later bedtime? Would it impact her mission to go to Emily’s birthday party without an adult supervisor? Would it mean that when the time came, she wouldn’t be trusted to drive a car? It seemed to risky, but despite her resolution to weather the storm on her own, her fear still lingered at the edges of her mind like shadows in the corners of her room.

             As a last attempt, when the shouting rose to a new, horrifying pitch, she scrambled out of bed and ran for her glasses, slipping them onto her face as if to stave off what she knew was coming.

             As she blinked behind the lenses, her vision came sharply into focus, and for a brief moment relief washed through her.

             Things began to blur, and she knew that her hyperopia hadn’t been quelled.

             Beyond her glasses she saw an elderly woman, white hair perfectly placed against the pillow, makeup flawless, clothes neat. She was dignified even in the hospital bed, tubes winding into each arm like leeches, sucking and regurgitating horrifying fluids into her veins. The woman didn’t seem to care about the leeches, but she cared about Mia. She turned to her, only slightly, as much as her weakening strength would allow, and smiled. The clock on the wall near her head was old, cream at one time, but now a dirty grey. It was four o’clock, and the sky outside of the window was dark and endless. “Time to go,” the woman whispered, and Mia blinked herself back into her own time, her own place, her own room.

             Back to the echoes of arguments not her business, arguments about the life of a woman destined to die at four o’clock.

             Mia took off her glasses and put them back into their case, then climbed into bed.

             ‘Hyperopia is a common vision condition in which you can see distant objects clearly, but objects nearby may be blurry.’

             How common could this be, Mia wondered. How many others could see what was to come, with absolutely no clue as to what was happening in front of their eyes.

It wasn’t always death.

             Sometimes she blinked and found herself in strange places where nothing seemed real, nothing familiar or grounding, like she was in the scene of a novel she had yet to read. In the distance she would see a wave, monumental in size, humbling, scarring, horrifying as it demolished the land in its path. Then she would blink, back in her own body, and her mother would call her down for dinner. She would go downstairs, eat, and talk to her parents. To her mother about Grace, Beth, her closest friends. To her father about homework, science that she hated, art that she loved. Eventually, maybe days later, or weeks, she would forget the wave. She would forget until it appeared again, this time on the television screen, from the phones of horrified onlookers as another natural disaster destroyed the part of the world that they called home. She grew into a subdued adolescent, not insecure but disillusioned. She felt incredibly small, powerless in a world full of decisions she could do nothing but watch.

             A budgie would spit out its food, and hours later her grandfather would call to complain that his birds were being fussy with food again, that he missed her visits, that she should walk over for a cup of tea and a cookie.

             She’d daydream about a boy in school, think about holding his hand, twining their fingers together as they walked and laughed. Then she’d blink down at her essay and see him blushing at something, another girl, his hands linked together as he clenched his fingers in a nervous gesture. She’d hang back. why even try when she knows that in a matter of weeks, he’ll be infatuated with someone else? Why attempt to do something if you know you can’t change what’s going to happen? It’s a lesson she learned young.

             Why wear glasses if her vision stayed the same?

Of course, she didn’t see everything. That would be ridiculous. Impossible. No, she only saw things she couldn’t change.

             If whatever forces were at work let her pick her sight, she would have seen the young woman hurrying along before she ran into her, spilling coffee over them both.

             But she didn’t, and the coffee was so hot it left their skin red and prickling from the pain.

             “Sorry!” the woman said, pulling Mia’s university books from the floor and passing them back. She was pretty, in a messy, chaotic kind of way. Her glasses were crooked on her long nose. “I’m so clumsy sometimes!”

             “It was my fault,” Mia said, looking down. She should have raised her head from her feet, a lesson her mother had been trying to teach her for the past two decades. It had yet to sink in. the coffee burned almost as much as the curious gaze of the young woman.

             “I’m Aleena,” she said. With one hand she brushed her dark curls away from her face and smiled brightly with wonderfully crooked teeth. “What’s your name?”

             “Mia,” she replied, somewhat lost.

             “Would you like me to buy you a new coffee, Mia?” Aleena asked, still smiling. Her eyes were as dark as her hair, as beautiful as her deep skin, as beguiling as the rest of her.

             “I thought you were in a rush,” Mia said. She could feel a blush spreading from the burn on her chest, up to her neck and cheeks.

             “Some things can afford to be postponed, and I’d like to go for coffee with you. What do you say?”

             Mia didn’t know where this was going. She always knew where things would end up, whether she wanted to or not. In this unnamed hesitation, uncertain vulnerability that felt larger than a stranger on the street and the cooling of fresh coffee on her shirt, she was as blind as everyone else, and that scared her even more than the gift of knowing.

             She never took risks. What was the point? Things were fated to happen whether she tried to intervene or not, and she’d known that since the first time she’d blinked and found herself somewhere distant. But Aleena was a stranger with a beguiling smile, and no matter how many times Mia blinked as they both waited for her to find the courage of her voice, her sight didn’t send her any clues. This future was locked behind an impenetrable door, unknown to her.

             “It’s just coffee,” Aleena said, softer now. Gentler, as if speaking to a spooked animal. Calmer, despite her wild appearance and the flurry in which she moved. “It doesn’t have to be anything more or less than coffee. One thing at a time, Mia.”

             One thing at a time.

             She’d never dealt with one thing at a time, it was a constant stream of everything at every time, all mixed and distorted into one inky blur of distant vision.

              But coffee sounded nice.

             Just coffee sounded very nice.

             “Okay,” she said, surprising herself. It felt like a risk, like a victory.

             Aleena’s answering smile felt like a reward.

How useful it would have been to know the significance of that coffee.

             How useful it would have been to know that they would spend hours talking, laughing, and only a handful of meetings later would share their first kiss outside of the doors of that same coffee shop. Mia wished she’d known what was coming, not because she would have changed it, but because she could have stopped worrying about her feelings being reciprocated, felt the ease of carelessness for longer than a fleeting moment.

             In a matter of weeks she found herself resenting her sight once more, not for her vision, but her lack of. Why in this one area couldn’t she see what was going to happen? People fell in and out of love all the time, uncertain but excited. Relationships began and end, people came and went as they always did.

             Mia found herself lost not in her hyperopia, but instead a haze of myopia. When she saw Aleena, she could see nothing past her. No distance, no future, just the present, the close, the heavy, significant now of it all. The way their hands linked together and matched so well, one pale and one tanned, one bare but for freckles, the other adorned in rings. The way Aleena always held open the door for Mia, the way Mia found herself enjoying hiding chocolate in Aleena’s belongings to cheer her up when stress bogged her down. The way they curled together in the cold, Aleena’s nose against her forehead, breath cloudy in front of her eyes. The way Aleena’s glasses steamed as she drank warm coffee, the way she smelt of lavender, always, because she used the oil for everything from sleep to dry skin. The way they read in silence together, danced together, lay together, smiled together. The way they seemed to be falling together, not separate or alone. Mia’s vision couldn’t stretch past the now of it all, taking in each detail one at a time until all that she saw was the present.

“I have hyperopia,” she admitted one late night. Aleena’s head was heavy against her shoulder, a pleasant, familiar weight.

             Aleena hummed. “That means you’re farsighted, right?”

             “Yeah.”

             “Well, I’m short-sighted. I think the technical term is myopia. People always say opposites attract, right? Maybe it was fate that we met.”

             Mia laughed at that. “I don’t think that whoever ‘they’ are meant that opposing vision conditions are the recipe for true love.”

             “My vision is terrible if I’m not up close to the object I’m looking at. When I bumped into you, I could barely feel the coffee. All I could focus on was you.”

             Mia swallowed. Such painful honesty was still foreign to her, but she was slowly learning the benefits of being open. “I… I’ve always struggled to stay in the present. I struggle to focus on what’s close. It’s easier to look into the distance than examine the truth of the closer details.”

             Aleena pressed a kiss to Mia’s neck. “Together we either have an astigmatism or perfect vision. Unfortunately, seeing into the future isn’t a task our humble, faulty eyes can perform, so only time will tell.”

             “If it were?” Mia asked, suddenly unreasonably tense. “If it were possible, would you look? Would you want to know?”

             Aleena laughed. “Of course not! If you’re always looking at the future, how can you enjoy the present? There’s something magical about only caring about the moment you’re living.”

             “You think so?”

             “I do.” Aleena sat up so that they were facing one another on Aleena’s old, sinking couch. The glow from the energy saving lightbulbs was dim, the sky outside of the window a deep unidentifiable dark. Aleena’s skin looked golden, burnished by a godly light from somewhere within her. She was the brightest thing in the room, her eyes the darkest, warm and deep. “Can’t you feel this, Mia? This moment now? What could possibly matter right now other than what we feel, what we see, hear, touch? The world outside of this room is endless. There will always be problems to be solved and troubles to be cured, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your moments. You deserve that – everyone does.”

             “I wish it were that simple,” she whispered. If only it were, if only she had the control she yearned for. If she couldn’t see where this life with Aleena would lead, why could she see the suffering of strangers? The mundane romance of the elderly? The simple life of wild birds, the laughter yet to come from a small, struggling baby – why could she see it? Why her?

             Aleena touched Mia’s hand. “Life isn’t about curing all ailments; it’s just about making the best of what you have. The future will always loom, lingering on the horizon, but darling, if you spend the present worrying about it then one day, you’ll have nothing to look forward to, only back. You’ll look behind at the miles you’ve walked, the years you’ve wasted in your fear, and you’ll wish you had allowed yourself those moments of quiet. Even if they come to an end and reality finds you, the future knocks at your door, you still need to allow yourself to enjoy your moments. Allow yourself a moment of myopia.”

             It felt possible while Aleena was touching her hand, absorbing her focus. Mia stared, and for the first time, felt her vision begin to narrow. Allow yourself those moments of quiet.

             ‘Myopia is a common vision condition in which you can see objects near to you clearly, but objects further away appear blurry.’

             Whether Aleena or someone else, or a favourite book, a beautiful sunny day, a moment in windbreak when the air seems to still, silent for a breath, and everything has paused – whether focusing on something close to you or merely yourself, a moment of myopia might be all that is needed to find peace.

             “I think you might be magic,” Mia whispered to Aleena.

             Aleena smiled. “I think we both know that I’m not the magic one here, darling, but doesn’t it feel wonderful to see so clearly when the two of us are looking together?”

             Myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism – they were terms that in childhood, seemed to make sense to Mia. She didn’t care for them now, however. What did labels matter? There was nothing that could fix her vision, but she had found a pair of glasses that seemed to fit her wonderfully. A new perspective and a new focus. Her hyperopia would remain, but so would her new glasses, the new lens in which to see the world.