Before anyone reads this, I guess I should warn you that this story has blood and gore and eye injury-related gross stuff.
I had this dream when I was 11/12 that I kept thinking of throughout the years. Now, I remember most of my dreams but I remember this one vividly. It was about my school having a play about pirates and knights. I played a pirate who was supposed to die. I was to fight a knight, get “stabbed”, die, and be the breaking point for the pirate knight war. Not gonna lie this wasn’t that bad of a plot for a dream play. So I fight the knight and he goes to ‘stab’ me but trips. He trips and the fake sword goes up and stabs me in the eye.
It bursts like a gusher.
But strangely I’m calm. The dream doesn’t become a nightmare. I just take off my bandana and use it as an eyepatch and stay in character. I fight but the kid is freaked and so he ‘dies’ instead. And then I wake up.
Ever since that dream, I had a reoccurring intrusive thought of just plucking out my eye. Scooping it out with a spoon. Picking it out with my bare hand. Pretending to fake some injury to get it surgically removed. I just kept thinking of ways to get rid of it.
These thoughts only got worse when my eyesight got worse in that eye. Only in that eye, only the right one. For a moment I felt hopeful, happy even, at the thought of it getting so bad that I could actually have it removed.
Sometimes those thoughts scared me. Not because of how violent they are but because of how much I wanted it. It became less like an intrusive thought and more like a daydream, like a wish.
I would catch myself staring at anything that I could use to take out my eye. For a period I actually stopped cooking because of the knives and only bought foods that can be eaten by hand.
I needed help. I knew that. But I didn’t want to seem crazy. I once tried telling some people about this before, some friends that I haven’t talked to now or seen since. Most of them didn’t take me seriously. Said that they get these thoughts all the time too. That I should stop worrying about it. The few that did take me seriously avoided me right after that. Thinking that I would hurt them, that I wanted their eyes too
…that resulted in a huge fight, both physical and verbal. They really saw me as a freak. As a soon-to-be serial killer whose trading call would be stealing people’s right eye.
That experience was more than enough for me. I didn’t want to go to a mental institute or something. So I tried to cure myself. I tried wearing an eyepatch, pretending that I had no right eye. I tried to keep myself busy. I tried to tell myself that my eye is a part of me that I love. It worked as well as I expected…terribly.
And then I discovered something thanks to my best friend. Let’s call her B. B, who smokes pot, noticed how stressed I was. I blamed it on insomnia, somewhat true. So she gave me melatonin, the strong stuff. It worked like a charm. Sleep was hard because I would dream of taking out my eye and even sleepwalk to the kitchen. Once I woke with a turkey thermometer in my hand, pointed to my face. But with melatonin, I would sleep without dreaming. One less problem for me.
I took it religiously every night. B notices this and asks if I wanna try pot. I said yes. It was nothing too strong, average stuff. Before we take it though she asks if I wanna try crossing with her. For those who don’t know, crossing is being high and drunk at the same time basically. I figured why not. When drunk I just get tired and cuddly so I didn’t think I’d do anything stupid or embarrassing. Plus it’d be a good distraction.
I blacked out sometime when the drugs kicked in.
I woke up to B screaming at me and her slamming something against the bathroom door. For a moment everything was blurry. Spotty, like when you stand up after laying down for so long. When my vision cleared everything was red.
It took me a moment to realize that red was in my eye. Covering my right eye to the point where I cannot see. At that time I finally registered what B was screaming.
“I CALLED 911!” slam
“SO FU’ING STOP I’ RIGHT NOW!” SLAM
“PLEEZE! STOP ‘N OPEN THE FU’ING DOOR!” SLAM
The red was my blood. It was in my eye socket. On my hands. In the sink with my mangled eye. On the mirror, all over the mirror. Used as ink to write two works over and over again.
Pluckitty-pluck
It’s been 3 months since then. I’ve had 1 surgery and am scheduled for another in 5 days. I blamed the drugs, and B backed me up, she forgot in her drunken state to take them. Making my reaction seem like we got a bad batch. Plus all the pot was ruined when my blood got on it. The police bought it.
B blamed herself until I looked at her with my remaining eye and thanked her. She cried, thinking I was thanking her for calling 911. For breaking down her bathroom door with her own body. For keeping pressure on my wound until the paramedics came. That there was nothing to forgive.
I was thankful for all of that. I was. And there was nothing to forgive. But that’s not why I thanked her. I thanked her for letting my greatest wish come true. I lost my eye and haven’t heard the thoughts ever since.