Camera Obscura

My eyes don’t work hard enough. I can’t see what others can.

What little vision I do have over-compensates by working too hard. I tend to see what others can’t.

Jung writes of a dark shadow that lurks inside every person, one that whispers from their subconscious. In people like me who don't quite belong, it whispers loudly and often.

My shadow knows I can’t see very well, so she likes to show me insects. She likes to project them onto the insides of my eyelids, especially when I’m sad, tired, or stressed. Dozens of them, crawling all over my arms, all over my walls.

They aren’t real, but they startle me anyway, making me jump and frantically check my skin. I blink again and they’re gone. I am seeing nothing. Like usual.

Every time this happens, I can hear her laugh. The sound of it is bright and sweet, like bait. I don't take the bait.

Time passes, and I think that she likes me. She whispers to me whenever I clumsily handle knives like any visually impaired person would.

She says she wants to help stop my downward spiral - All I'd have to do is move that knife in a very easy, very specific sort of way.

The offer moves me. I am at once smitten and grieving. Nauseous and deeply in love. I don't know how to name this new, chimerical emotion. It gets hard to breathe if I try. So I ignore her.

She doesn’t like being ignored. It makes her lash out in anger.

One day, I notice that my right eye looks dull and lifeless in the mirror. My pupil is white and stuck in a small, rhombus-like shape. It can no longer expand or contract.

Pupils should not have sharp corners.

I can't see out of that pupil, anymore. My already restricted sight is now restricted even further.

My brand new tunnel vision is a very difficult adjustment. I can’t pretend that I’m like everybody else. Everything is harder. Everything is darker.

I am forced to be more vulnerable and more resilient at the same time, and I am not ready. Not physically, mentally, or emotionally.

My shadow’s whispering gets worse. It simmers my brain on low until my thoughts grow soupy and malleable.

I can see her much more often, now. She presents herself to me and begs for me to lay with her. The ghostly spiders on my wall like to crawl all over her. All I can do is stare, and consider her offer.

I secretly like staring. This makes me uncomfortable, and I ignore her again.

She is methodical as she courts me. She is playing the long game and waiting for me to give up and say yes. But much like me, she pretends to be patient but actually isn't.

I am run ragged from the herculean effort required to ignore her.

I have a strong sense that she will take my other eye, too. It's a gut feeling.

Maybe one day, I will grow used to the insectoid threats she casts onto my remaining, failing retina. I won't startle at them and check my skin. They will have blended into the background, becoming permanent fixtures upon my flesh.

Maybe one day, it will be real bugs instead of fake ones, and I won't notice. Hundreds of very real, very dead spiders will litter my walls and pillow and I won't notice.

Maybe one day, she will decide that she has waited enough. She will emerge from my scalp and stand behind me and I won't notice.

Or just to my right and I won't notice. Obviously.

I will turn my head just enough so my good eye will catch her staring. She will ask me. In my exhausted weakness I will begin to think "yes", just to make her happy. I am a people pleaser, even as she is far removed from personhood.

She will remove me from personhood, too.

She will eagerly extend her hair like needles and embed the strands into my body.

And then she will make me wait. I don't yet know how long for.

It hurts to eat. I'm trying not to think too hard about that.

I hope that one day, the dozens of black wires in me will move upwards, lovingly destroying everything in their path. I will be in so much pain but desperately relieved.

She'll save my remaining eye for last, so I can watch her untether me while I blush and mourn.