The “Eyes” Have It

Many of you may know of my “eye” phobia...though I’d be willing to bet that most of you do not. I don’t call it a phobia for nothing. Let me explain. No. There is too much...let me sum up. (Five points to anyone who knows which movie I’m quoting there.) Ever since I can remember, I’ve been afraid – no, terrified – of things happening to my (and other people’s) eyes. Injuries, you know? I had a recurring dream growing up of my younger brother, Jeffrey (who’s now thirty and getting married this year!!!) poking his eye out with a stick. This dream is as clear to me today as it was a hundred or so years ago when I was still having it regularly. In this dream, the edges and corners are kind of soft, hazy – like they do to soap opera scenes where someone is remembering something, you know? I’m watching it like one watches a scary movie or television program they’ve seen before, where even though they know what’s coming, they’re still apprehensive? Jeffrey is just a little boy in this dream. He’s probably no more than four or five. He’s standing in the driveway of the house we grew up in on Asylum Ave in West Hartford, facing away from me so that I can only see the back of his head. He seems to be looking at the dogwood tree that was in our front yard. Slowly...oh, so agonizingly slowly...he turns around so that now I’m looking at his smiling face. He seems to be quite happy and completely unaware that there’s a big gaping, dripping hole where his right eye used to be!!! I know there’s a stick in his hand, but I can’t see it – in the way of dreams. This is when I always wake up shaking and sweating. It’s not funny in the way that what’s-his-name from A Christmas Story gets told over and over, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” It’s horrible. I’ve poked myself in the eye (the white part) with the end of a straw when I was much, much younger and less inclined to pay attention to what I was doing. I remember the little red “bubble” that was in my eye for weeks! I remember being afraid of what would happen if it burst. I’ve had Conjunctivitis (that’s Pink Eye) more times than I can count. I’ve had one really bad eye infection (when I lived in Mystic, CT) where I lost quite a bit of the vision in my right eye. This was when Clint was taking me to the eye doctor every other day and they were monitoring my vision closely, afraid if the vision went completely out of the infected eye, that the left eye might follow suit. That was when I was 20. I had to wear these funky blue glasses (think Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula ca. 1992 and you’d just about have it right) that were supposed to reduce the glare of light and allow my eye(s) to heal. I had to wear them indoors, as well as out – and though initially I thought I was cool, I eventually grew to hate wearing them. I have fought with allergies that made my eyes alternately water fiercely or feel like someone dumped a bucket of sand in them. I have this weird condition (is it a condition? I don’t really know.) where my eyelashes fall out. Just fall out. I sometimes have blank spots on my eye lids where the lashes should be. It makes me look strange. I refused to watch my husband’s Lasik eye surgery that was piped to a television in the waiting room of the Refractive Surgery Center back in 2001 so the curious could watch a live surgery. I sat under the TV and tried to avoid looking at the reflection of the TV in the glass of the waiting room artwork. I cannot watch movies with people who have eye injuries or listen to news stories regarding people who have stupidly shot themselves in the head with nail guns and lived to tell the tale. I try to immediately turn these things off. It all makes me physically ill. So Charlie’s eye injury has me panicked and feeling sick. It’s a small injury; an accident where the inside corner of his left eye lid (where his thick, beautiful lashes are) and the clear white part of his eye met with the corner of a book. I’m honestly not sure how it happened – and more importantly, I don’t care. The fact that it happened is all that matters to me. He’s been to see our eye doctor friend (Refractive Surgery Center) and though the white part of his eye is scratched and there’s an injury to the eye lid – it is not permanent damage. Should make me feel better, right? Nope. Charlie has this goopy eye gel he gets morning and night and thank God he’s good about letting us (Jamie) put it in. He keeps squeezing his eye shut. Poor kid. I can hardly look at him because all I want to do is cry when I see him and Charlie’s got just about the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. Jamie doesn’t seem to understand this and says that I’m afraid of everything, which is just plain not true. Ok – I’m done now. I feel like I’ve just written a horror story and I need to go get a cup of coffee and take a breather. TTFN JMS