Decay

These days, I have been preoccupied with the notion of decaying.

It didn't come from an obsession with macabre subject matters or the morbidity of self-indulgence in dark imagination.

Went to see the optometrist on Thursday after a persistent sense of discomfort in the eyes. He did a cornea check on me using an apparatus that will magnify the eyes through the lens. His sombre expression after the test gave me a stir in the stomach as my shoulders stiffened with anxious anticipation.

He paused and asked:' Vyanne, have u done an eye check before?"

I shook my head. Now i could a feel a lump of lead in my stomach. No, don't tell me there is some sort of growth in my eyes and I am going to be blind...I was feeling sick with dread of what he might say next, but could not take the heavy atmosphere any longer. So I tried to break it in a forcefully joking manner:" Don't look so serious, u r scarying me...as if it is very bad..."

"It is bad." He said. I froze. As he started to draw an eye on a piece of paper.

" Ok, Vyanne, a person's normal eye looks like this. Blood vessels from the white part of the eye will make their way very slightly into the iris and loop back. But for you, your blood vessels have started to grow deeper into the iris. This is not an overnight thing, it means that your eyes have been starved from oxygen from a long period of time, such that the blood vessels grow to provide more oxygen to your eyes?" He looked at me with a disapproving look now." You wear your contact lenses for long hours don't you?"

I gulped and nodded. I have become so accustomed to wearing them for so long now, as they make me feel that I have perfect vision ; wearing glasses sometimes makes me feel inconvenienced and induces headaches at times.

" You are young, and beautiful (i didn't add this on my own :P) , u don't want anything to happen to your eyes at such a age, so u should really start taking care of them. If the blood vessels cover over ur pupil it may constitute blockage of light into it. "

I slumped back to the chair now, dazed. He waved his hand in front of my face a few times. " Vyanne , are u with me?" I was jolted back into the grim reality. "Will i be blind? " I managed to force out the most difficult question.

" No, you will not be. Blindness is due to the death of sensory nerves, but for u, your eyes have started to grow new blood vessels.When u start taking care now, the blood will withdraw from those blood vessels to the surrounding of your iris, then u are pretty much fine. But the blood vessels will still be there.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. So it is not a death sentence. According to him I just have to stop wearing contact lenses for too long and I will be fine.

However I still felt shaken then. After that I can’t stop thinking , and slowly beginning to understand how it might feel for someone to learn from the doctor that she/he has some kind of disease and it is incurable. Like cancer at terminal stage. And then on, slowly feeling the life inside slowly seeping away in slow decay. It is as though one’s body is a leaking bottle, whatever life in it is flowing away through the leak. The day it stops leaking is the day when the electrocardiogram showing the heartbeats goes flat…It must be a feeling of sheer loneliness, and fear, but most of all, a sense of desperate helplessness, to feel yourself slowly withering and crinkling inside, the degeneration slowly waste your muscles and energy away. Even now, after assurance that the optometrist that I will be fine,I am still preoccupied with the idea that my eyes may be gradually degenerate…maybe that one day I will not be able to see anymore.

There is even something poetically poignant about the process of decay. Some artists identify it as a form of solemn, dark beauty, the inevitable end to a cycle of birth, growth, glory of peak and death. Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has cultish fetish in documenting the mystery of death in his photos; he loves taking photos of wilting flowers, and found his dying wife his most exciting subject when she suffered from ovarian cancer. His wife was pictured curling herself up while sleeping in a boat, eating her last meal and lying in the hospital bed.

Death has always been a philosophically fascinating subject matter for authors, artists, theatre performers. But exactly how many people can understand the harshness of solitude that a person has to face when it comes to confronting his/her own? To me, I can imagine it to be like a lonesome walk into a deep dark tunnel, the further u walk inwards, the dimmer it becomes, and everything just went black. Some religions convince u that u can reach the end side of the tunnel, when there is light once more, and u are safe in the hands of God.

I can never forget the last days before my Grandma passed away. She became so snappy; and refused to talk to people. I had never seen her so quiet in my life. No matter what I did there was no way that she would give me a hearty smile that was once so easy to come by. When I was small, she used to pat me to sleep, and we would sleep facing each other. But during her last days, she simply turned the other way. It was very painful to witness the stranger that she has evolved into, she simply withdrew within herself and no matter what I did, I could no longer reach her. One night when she was asleep, I held her hand and I just broke out crying. I could sense how lonesome she was, how she was slowly slipping away, but there was nothing that I could do to draw her out from the shrouding darkness that she was slowly disappearing into…nothing. I cried for my ownhelplessness, I cried for the pain she was going through. Everytime I saw the giant needle being poked into her arm during her dialysis, leaving horrid blood clots and blue blacks, my heart just wrenched up.. Since I was small I had been praying to whichever God that my small mind can conceive, that please God, I don’t mind living a few less years, just let my grandma live till 100 years old…

Just in case that some of you might be worried, I am fine. I truly am. Decay may be an unavoidable and an ongoing process even during this instance, but I am sure there are things which I can do to slow it down. Health is our greatest asset, take care everyone,