Eyes Are the Blindness

It’s happening again. That all-too-familiar vibration begins deep inside my body, low and electrical, like live wires twitching beneath my skin. It rattles through my chest, hums behind my teeth, buzzes through my skull and shakes the marrow in my bones awake. Beneath me, the mattress trembles in faint uneven pulses while I lie perfectly still, paralysed inside my own skin. Years ago, this feeling terrified me. Back then, I thought I was dying. Possessed. Developing some rare neurological condition that would eventually be named after me in a medical journal. Now? This is my time to shine. This is the moment the ordinary world loosens its grip. The moment consciousness cracks open at the seams. The gateway yawns open. I lie perfectly still and let the vibrations build. They swell like waves beneath my skin, layer upon layer of frequency stacking over each other until my entire body feels electrically charged. Reality itself begins to come undone at the edges. Then comes the familiar — POP. Like a champagne cork leaving existence. And suddenly my energy body slips free. I rise out of myself clumsily at first, heavy and disoriented, staggering around my bedroom on useless jelly legs. Everything looks subtly wrong in the way dreams always do — almost convincing until you look too closely. The walls bend softly. Shadows breathe in the corners. The furniture looms over me, oversized and watchful, like it’s aware of my presence. But I quickly find my bearings. And I go straight to it. “Take me beyond,” I whisper into the dark. Immediately, my consciousness splits in two. In one awareness, I’m still standing in my bedroom, half-drunk on dimensional jet lag. In the other… I’m ascending. Fast. The world falls away at impossible speed. Reality peels apart in thin translucent layers, each one revealing another hidden beneath it. Whole versions of existence drift past like discarded skins. The higher I rise, the lighter I become. Every anxiety, every insecurity, every pathetic little human worry begins slipping from me like coins falling from torn pockets. Bills. Aging. Emails. Whether people secretly tolerate me rather than genuinely like me. Whether I sounded weird in a conversation six years ago. Gone. As though lower frequencies simply cannot survive up here. “I want to see God,” I say aloud. Which, in hindsight, feels like a spectacularly reckless thing to request from the universe. Not because I believe in some old man floating around in linen robes judging humanity from a celestial gazebo, but because curiosity is stitched into my bones like a cosmic typo. The ascent continues. Soon the world loses its edges entirely. No walls. No sky. No up or down. Only geometry. Endless sacred patterns folding in and out of themselves like living origami. Shapes birth other shapes in impossible sequences. Structures intertwining and reproducing like celestial organisms Fractals blossom across the void like mathematical flowers fed on pure consciousness. Colours exist here that I cannot translate into human language. Colours that feel sentient. Colours that seem desperate to communicate something just beyond my understanding. And in the distance — A bright white light peeks through the darkness. Tiny at first. Then enormous. Watching. Waiting. Naturally, I move towards it. Because if there’s one thing humanity collectively excels at, it’s walking directly towards things that should probably be left alone. The light swallows me whole. And spits me out somewhere else entirely. I land abruptly in what appears to be… a waiting room. White walls. Clinical lighting. Plastic chairs line the walls with the kind of sanitised emptiness usually reserved for hospitals and interrogation rooms. There’s not even a dying plant in the corner trying its best to make the place feel remotely human. There is nobody here except me. No receptionist. No paperwork. No inspirational poster reminding me to “Hang in there!” beside a cat dangling from a tree branch. Just silence pressing against the walls like something breathing on the other side of them. Meanwhile, in the other layer of consciousness — my husband enters the bedroom. And he has that look on his face. That slightly menacing glint that says: I’m horny, and unfortunately your participation is no longer optional. Before I can even form the words, “Actually, I’m really quite tired—” he is already removing his clothes with the determined urgency of a man assembling IKEA furniture before becoming underwhelmed and abandoning the project entirely. Internally, I sigh. Fine. He’s had a stressful day. I’ll allow it. And before I know it, I’m pressed against the dresser while the entire piece of furniture rocks violently back and forth like it’s reconsidering its whole purpose in life. I let go for a moment. Actually enjoy it. A squeal escapes me. “You’ll wake the boys,” he hisses. Oh yeah. Right. Motherhood. I immediately turn my internal volume settings to library mode. “Mrs Lyle.” A booming voice cracks through reality itself. SNAP. Back in the waiting room. A man stands before me wearing a lab coat and holding a clipboard. Or maybe he’s a doctor. Or maybe he’s simply dressed as one, in the same way nightmares often borrow familiar costumes to make themselves easier to swallow. “Come this way,” he says calmly. I follow him down a long white corridor that seems to stretch into infinity. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead with a faint electrical hum. Every footstep echoes too loudly. The corridor feels less like reality and more like someone wearing reality’s skin. Finally, we stop before a single white door. A plaque is mounted beside it. One word. ENLIGHTENMENT I nod approvingly. Bit dramatic. But alright. The doctor opens the door. The room beyond is completely white except for a single recliner chair sitting in the corner beneath an overhead light. “Please sit down,” he says. “We’ve got lots to discuss.” Meanwhile — somewhere in another splintered dream shard of consciousness — my husband continues enthusiastically trying to break both me and the dresser simultaneously. But then he pauses. Because Monkey is staring at us. Our cat sits silently in the darkness at the foot of the bed, his golden eyes glowing like cursed lanterns. Judgement radiates from him in palpable waves. Not anger. Worse. Pure disappointment. His face says: Honestly. Again? I survived the neutering for this? The moment should feel deeply off-putting. And yet somehow it doesn’t stop either of us. Human beings truly are extraordinary creatures. “So,” the doctor says, glancing down at his clipboard, “how are you getting on with your new glasses?” The question feels absurdly mundane. “Oh… umm… I don’t really wear them much,” I admit “Only for watching TV.” The doctor nods slowly. Disapprovingly. “You’d rather not see clearly?” “Well…” I hesitate. “Strangely, I do prefer life with a blur filter. Everything looks prettier slightly out of focus.” Which is true. The new glasses changed everything. I hadn’t realised how blind I actually was until the optician placed them on my face and — holy shit. The world arrived all at once. Sharp edges. Skin texture. Dust particles. Pores the size of lunar craters. Wrinkles. So many unnecessary wrinkles. At first it felt magical. Then I looked in the mirror and saw details my self-esteem had mercifully concealed from me for years. I took the glasses off immediately. “Yeah,” I’d said at the time. “These are strictly for television.” “Hm,” the doctor murmurs now. “Interesting.” He strokes his beard thoughtfully. “It sounds as though you no longer need your eyes.” I laugh. He doesn’t. “We can remove them easily enough,” he says matter-of-factly. My stomach drops. “But I’ll be blind.” “Amanda,” he says gently, “you are already blind.” I stare at him. And that’s when I notice it. The doctor has no eyes. None. Only two endless black hollows where eyeballs should be. Not empty sockets. Not wounds. Something deeper. Something cosmic. Ancient. Hungry. Like holes punched directly into reality itself into something much older waiting behind it. “Don’t shake your head at me,” he says sternly. A chill runs through me. How does he know I’m shaking my head? He can’t see. He has no eyes. No sight. “You don’t need eyes to see, Amanda,” he says calmly, as though this explains everything. “When you remove all five senses… that is when you truly perceive reality.” “But—” “Eyes are the blindness,” he interrupts. “They reduce infinity into something small enough for the brain to survive.” His voice echoes strangely now. As though multiple versions of him are speaking at once from slightly different dimensions. “We’ve been viewing the universe through foggy lenses,” he continues. “Take them away… and you’ll finally see everything.” I swallow hard. “I’d quite like to keep my eyeballs, thanks.” “Don’t you want the truth?” And suddenly it hits me. All of it. Every strange experience. Every spiritual obsession. Every late-night search for meaning. Every desperate reaching into the dark hoping something would finally answer back. What am I actually looking for? Someone to open the final door? Someone to switch on the cosmic light and say: There. That’s what existence means. Mystery solved. But then what? What happens when there are no more questions left? Maybe mystery itself is the point. Maybe the universe survives because nobody understands it. Maybe certainty is where wonder goes to die. Maybe some doors exist only to remain closed. Maybe there are rooms within reality we were never designed to enter. And just as the thought lands — another vibration rolls through me. Violent. Sudden. Reality tears open again. I’m back with my husband. He’s panting heavily against my neck now. “Oh Mandy,” he breathes. “I needed that.” And suddenly — I start laughing. Completely uncontrollably. Because I realise this isn’t reality either. Not fully. Just another microscopic viewpoint inside an infinity of watching eyes. Monkey’s eyes still glow in the darkness. Watching us. Judging us. Perhaps understanding far more than either of us ever will. And for one strange moment, I wonder what this looks like through his consciousness. Two ridiculous human beings thrashing around in the dark believing themselves to be the centre of existence while the universe unfolds silently beyond the bedroom walls, vast and indifferent and impossibly old. Then — another POP. I jolt awake in bed. Half asleep. Half somewhere else. The room is dark and still. My husband — the real version, I think — shifts behind me and sleepily rubs against my back. There’s a long pause. Then he mutters: “Round two?” And from somewhere near the end of the bed — Monkey releases the long, exhausted sigh of a creature who understands reality far better than either of us ever will.