Glasses

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Sometimes I like to watch the TV without my glasses on. I know I shouldn't do it; certainly all the nurses say so, and Doctor Paul when he comes by. They say it's bad for my eyes, and maybe it is.

Only I've discovered the real reason they don't want me watching the TV that way. And it isn't my eyes at all, not really.

It's what I see.

Everyone here at the Home watching like normal, they see whatever the TV people want them to see -- the soaps, or some movie, or the commercial where the little talking lizard tells people to buy car insurance.

They see what's on the surface.

But I, I know to take off my glasses -- I'm very nearsighted, you see, so everything becomes all blurry -- and I know to take them off, and then to watch the TV. And I see such things. Such amazing things.

The first time I tried it, it was because I had managed to bend one side of my glasses, and they didn't sit on my face right. It was giving me a headache, so I tried watching with them off. And at first it was just like normal, "Mary Poppins" playing on the screen just like before, only all blurry since I couldn't see.

Only then I realized that it wasn't just blurs, that I was looking at a face, that there was a face on the screen, and the face was speaking, only I couldn't hear because the sound was still "Mary Poppins" plus Geraldine has these fits sometimes and she was having one then. But I could still tell that the face on the TV wanted to tell me something.

Something important.

Something just for me.

The more I watch the face -- when the nurses aren't around to tell me to put my glasses back on, because they don't want me to know about this -- but the more I watch it, the more I think I can almost understand what it's telling me. What it's telling me to do.

I think if I can just get everything else quiet, I'll be able to hear what the face is saying. I just have to get to the TV when no one else in the Home is watching it, and turn it down down down almost all the way, and listen carefully when everything else is silent.

It's hard to get everyone to be silent, because there's so many of us in here and some of us yell a lot and some of us don't really know what's going on anymore anyway, but I think I can make them be quiet. If I just make them, they'll be quiet. As quiet as I want them be, for a very long time.

I think that's what the face wants, for me to listen. For me to hear it.

For me to hear what it has to tell me.

The nurses still try to stop me, and Doctor Paul; "put your glasses back on, Emma," they say, "you'll ruin your eyes."

But I know what they're really up to. They want to keep me from seeing. And listening. Not that they can stop me.

Soon enough I'll finally hear what the face in the screen has to tell me. And no one will stop me.

No one at all.


Meta: I guess it was only a matter of time until I gave in and wrote something that aspires to be from the diary of a lunatic. It's either that, or read about poverty and desperation day after day, then saunter off to slit my wrists and draw animal-men on the bathroom walls in my own blood -- and I never was too good at drawing animal-men.