I can see everything around me. It’s a blessing to still have my vision at seventeen. Oh, just to put you into perspective. I have RP. I’m visually impaired and have been told that I will lose my sight at any moment in time. Thankfully that has not happened yet. Which is also why I do my rounds around the house to make sure everything and everyone is in place. I’m paranoid about this and I do not mind admitting it.
“Mom, do you know where Nujoud is?” I say as I walk to my room.
“What! I cannot hear you. She must be in her room.” Mom yells as she goes into the kitchen.
Why on earth do I have to do everything around here!
I begin to prepare my agenda for the day. I need to finish my homework, go to dance, help mom with chores, call my friends and see where we are meeting up, basically just another Friday at home. I go into my bathroom. It’s filled with girly products from blushers and lipsticks to creams and body soups. As I get my clothes on, rock and roll music blasts through the room next door. Seems Nujoud is up to her reckless madness as usual. She’s my younger sister. Known for her impulsive actions. She’s the rebel of the family.
Am I ever going to have a single moment of peace? Guess not!!
As I turn around I feel off balance as if I was the Titanic and have sunk. Why is the bathroom so dark and why is everything out of proportion? I disregard this feeling and head out of the bathroom and leave my room.
I walk straight into my mother’s bathroom. It’s filled with two sinks, one full of life and one empty looking. That used to be for my dad until he recently passed away. I can still see him standing there shaving. He used to say, “Bonayati, you can have anything you want if you work for it. Hit it!” As I move around I begin to realize my perception of things is not in place. Everything is there yet, it isn’t.
My vision is disintegrating. My eyes are slowly dying. It can’t be true! It just can’t!!!
I run out the door. Not realizing that I hit something. I hear it before I see it. I feel it in my bones. My mother’s precious mirror has broken. Time has slowed.
Mirror shards falling shattering leaving stains of dislocated glass everywhere. I look in front of me. I feel as if I am in a box with light while darkness seeps through crumbling the light until it is no more until I can only see light in the middle of the box.
I move forward stepping on glass. Pain erupts making way for blood to drain through the carpet, bloodying it until all is left is crimson and hurt. Hurt that my image becomes no more. I’m looking at a broken image. I’m looking at nothing. As I lean to take a peace of glass I hear rain. Rain of glass falling, hitting the carpet with a splash as it's swallowed by blood now splattered on the ground. It is a musical sound really. Musical? Ironic really!
Why me?
My vision becomes hazy as I hear shouting around me. People moving around frantically trying to push me away from the mirror, moving me from this dislocated wall. Why are they even trying? Can’t they not see that my life has shattered into tiny pieces? I hear sirens as my eyes begin to lose their souls. I become a china doll, static, lifeless as the paramedics are carrying me out of the house. They will never know how I feel. They do not understand that I can never be like I was. A funny, happy, joyful person full of energy and light, well, that light died as soon as the first shard of glass hit the carpet. The light became no more.
………..
Days become hours. Hours become minutes. I still remember that day as if it were yesterday. As I sit in my hospital bed I feel everything. I hear everything. The doctor scribbles away. The pen squeaking on paper, shoes wrestling in the corridor, next-door neighbor going through chronic pain while the nurses try to quiet him down, my mum crying, my sister oozing with curiosity. I knew my life has changed filled with uncertainty. I knew I had to open a new chapter in my life. People keep asking me what happened. I honestly do not remember the events in chronological order. I know one thing for certain … days become months, changing digitally into years.
My life has become shattering images on the edges of the discarded mirror.