Of late, my eyes got tired and dry with my supposedly high-oxygen, breathable contact lenses on for just half a day. It wasn't so before my 30s. I wonder if I should go for a pre-LASIK eye test, to check if I could get my vision corrected. All my 3 siblings had done it, none of them had eyesight worse than mine. Why hadn't I?
I thought hard...
I guess I wasn't exactly worried about what you are expecting - getting my cornea cut and the possible complications that could arise. Rather, I was fearful of losing my eyesight totally. Murphy's Law states - Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. What if the cutting technology wasn't precise enough? Would I turn blind? I didn't want to risk it.
I started wearing my 1st pair of spectacles in kindergarten. I could recall a time when little Yang feared bringing the health booklet to primary school for body check-ups, the eye test in particular, as my eyesight worsened exponentially over a few years.
When the lights were off in late night, I experienced night blindness without my glasses. Sometimes I would cry in bed, confiding in my sister (who slept in the bunk above me): 有一天,我會不會變瞎子呢?
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為何一到黃昏 寂寞好深 遮住回你懷裡的路程
等你的腳步聲 給我新生 我的夜盲症就快要變永恆
任性的淚水 若洗淨雙眼 或許哭能恢復 我視線
慢條斯理的時間 若能加速到達明天
或許我的你 能提早些見我一面
♪夜盲症, 蔡健雅♪
作詞:小寒
作曲:蔡健雅
編曲:黃韻仁
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My CCA in secondary school was Dance. I didn't know my high myopia and astigmatism would be a burden until we had rehearsals for my first stage performance.
The stage lights were usually off at the start of a dance item. Depending on the choreography, the lights could be dimmed as well at certain points during the performance.
Lens optical technology wasn't as advanced then. I was disappointed to hear from the optician in the neighbourhood that they didn't have the technology to make contact lenses for my high astigmatism.
Without my glasses, I couldn't tell faces even from a near distance. (Just tested in front of a mirror, I couldn't figure my facial features from an arm's length now.) My greatest fear was when I needed to dance near the edge of the stage. Because there's a blurred layer of "atmosphere" beyond the edge, I couldn't tell the edge clearly.
So I went through performances and Youth Day competitions without a pair of glasses or contact lenses. (It just looked silly wearing my glasses with stage make-up and a traditional Chinese costume.) Everyone knew I was always very worried before a performance, probably about missing a music beat, a dance step. Only one or two close friends knew my true anxiety stemmed from a poor vision. Yep, I kept it from the teachers too.
But there was one thing I have to give credit to my eyes. They helped me to focus my heart more on listening, dancing and feeling. They cultivated my courage to perform with a poor eyesight and rid my mind of stage fright. Yep I wasn't afraid of the audience, as most performers would. Whether you were watching attentively, chatting away or dozing off, I couldn't see you.
Ok back to the point. Maybe I should just go for a pre-LASIK eye test first. Maybe I wouldn't qualify for a surgery at all, due to high astigmatism.
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Snapped a picture of my Kindergarten graduation class photo for one of Yang's Favourite Things.
I started saying "会生... 会引来蚂蚁" today. Some improvement.
Dinner time. I bit onto something brittle suddenly. It was a tiny cream-coloured bony-like chip, which came out along with a thin strand from a green bean in my packed rice. I wonder if it was a tiny chicken bone amongst the veggies like the way my confinement dishes had been.
I felt my teeth with my tongue and realised what it really was - a quarter of my left bottom molar! Oopsy!
Art-in-Yang's-yoghurt tonight - I tried to piece a nice dancer's silhouette I found, which I could remember myself in that dance pose before. But this silhouette in my yoghurt seemed a little off-balanced, think she's gonna fall back the next moment. Lol. Is that me?
Add an aura emanating from the silhouette would be what I had seen.