Oculus

There was a moment, during my recent corrective surgery, where the doctor attempted to gently open a flap that was created using a pretty precise. laser. Problem with that is the fact that the flap is rather tiny, and often fibers from within the eye itself are not completely sliced. So the doctor has to use a set of pliers to gently pull and nudge at the flap, until those fibers yield and the incision is clear.

It was days later that it occurred to me how you and I seem to have followed a similar trajectory.

I honestly do not know how it happened. But something got in there pretty fast, and a bond that ties us together seemed to have been cut altogether. I played it back in my mind a thousand times, to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. But no, it was all just fine.

Until it wasn’t.

And if I thought that was confusing, then I cannot begin to express how I felt when, over the following days, I watched as something invisible tugged at the torn flap in our relationship, while strands of tissue awkwardly stretched and then gave way in resignation. It was in our interactions, in the way we avoided looking at one another, in the stunted conversations and the too-long pauses that seemed to punctuate every attempt to work against that indelible force.

But it just felt like an inevitability after a while. I realized that I was starting to treat it like it was the new norm; I was leaning into the gusts of dissolution, letting them drive me away from you. I knew that I was probably coming across like a total ass, but it seemed like you too had accepted the new status quo, and we were just merely engaging in the necessary dance of separation.

If I were to attempt to describe how it felt, and still feels sometimes — whenever I let it, that is, I’d say that my brain catches fire; it blazes with too many thoughts and questions and emotions that I end up just shutting it all down. I do so because, I know that if I were to let it go on, it would just burn endlessly, seeking an answer that simply doesn’t exist. Who knows why these things end? Sometimes there’s a clear instigating incident, other times it’s a slow vague spiral into a grey nothingness. It’s not even thrilling, the way violent endings are.

Perhaps that’s the thing that saddens me the most; the apathy in which we seem to have both drowned in.

— — -

After the flap is successfully shorn aside, the doctor utilizes the laser to make the necessary corrective changes, and then methodically realign the flap against the cornea, giving it the chance to naturally heal. A part of me, a not-so-small part, wishes the analogy would carry through to this conclusion instead. I’m hoping this tear allows for a reunion in the future, one that houses a healthier, stronger core, that gives us the gift of a sharper image of what is to come.