Born with a secret
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." - Desiderius Erasmus1
Beneath the veiled sky of twilight, where the world hovers between day and night, the story of an extraordinary artist begins. This tale, woven from the threads of adversity and triumph, is not just about sight, but about vision — the kind that sees beyond the ordinary, transcending the barriers of a single eye.
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When I close my eyes, the flashbacks start, looping like an old movie on a broken tape. Over and over, the same scenes, the same questions...
"Why does your left eye always turn like that?" Jake blurted out one day, while we were kids playing on the playground outside our Kindergarten in 2001. "My mum says it's a lazy eye," I replied with the innocence of a three-year-old, believing I was just like everyone else. How could I know that I was seeing the world differently, with only one eye really working?
Life for me was normal, as normal as it could be with one functioning eye. Watching TV, surfing the internet, doing homework, playing Game Boy, swimming – all with one eye. It was my normal, until the truth came crashing down.
I was five when my world changed. A routine check-up at KPJ Johor Specialist Hospital revealed the harsh reality – my left vision was barely functioning. My parents were frantic, pleading with the doctors for a cure. But it was a ticking time bomb; my vision could vanish completely any day.
That evening, my parents told me everything. Born prematurely, I weighed just 900 grams. For 45 days, I fought for life on a ventilator, then another 24 in recovery. My twin brother Moses, born three minutes after me, didn't make it. During those critical days, my left eye suffered irreparable damage due to excessive oxygen – a necessary evil to save my life.
Understanding the full story took years. I was just a kid, grappling with the fact that I was different. The thick glasses I wore in primary school drew curious stares and endless questions. "Why doesn't your left eye look straight?" "What happened to your eye?" My responses were cold, a mask for the crumbling confidence inside. I became withdrawn, spending hours cocooned in my room, lost in the lyrics of 'Creep' by Radiohead.
The depression deepened. Music became my escape, shifting to the heavier tones of 'Chop Suey'. Hours would pass in solitude until one day, something snapped. I needed to break free. Staring at my reflection, my right eye meeting the crooked gaze of the left, I started scribbling on the mirror with toothpaste, envisioning a perfect vision.
That's when art found me. In my darkest moments, I turned to drawing, channeling my turmoil onto blank pages. The more I drew, the more control I felt. What started as abstract expressions of emotion evolved into landscapes, portraits, and finally, blueprints of a super-intelligent eye. It was a dream, a vision of a future where technology could restore sight. But as I gazed at my sketches, reality hit hard – for now, it remained just a dream.