February 10th, 2018 was a normal Saturday. I woke up, brushed my hair, washed my face, and went to reach for my glasses on my bedside table except...they weren't there. In their place was an assortment of eye drops that I was to take four times a day for the next week. This was not a normal Saturday. I looked out the window towards the green blob I had become familiar with, but was instead greeted with a beautiful assortment of dainty leaves that made up the tree in our backyard.

I have worn glasses for as long as I can remember, but kept their usage towards the absolute minimum. My parents had informed me that the more I wore them, the worse my eyesight would get. Looking at the board at school, the television or computer, and--once I turned 16--the road when I was driving were the only instances when I permitted myself the extra help of seeing. The world around me, unless it was imperative that I knew what it was showing me, was a blur of color and shapes. I guess that could be a reason behind my fascination with color, especially ones that caught the eye such as neons and vivids. So you could see how disorienting it would be to randomly look at something far away and see it in its true form, rather than a merely bare-bones version.

The day of my laser eye surgery, I did not realise how real it all was. Even today, five days after the operation, I am convinced it is all a sick joke, that I will soon be thrust out of this dream of clarity and into the abstract world of multi-colored fog I had been used to all my life. However, I am content to soak in all of the intricate lines and layers of the world around me with my new and improved eyes for as long as I am able to. I look at the faces of people around me and far from me and I see them. I see the names of stores, the intricate carvings on certain old buildings that are so often ignored, I see the outlines of the clouds and how they now look as if they were hand-sculpted by Praxiteles himself. As my journey continues on in my quest to rediscover the world, I marvel at the beauty of life, that if everything else was going awry, one could take a moment to appreciate the aesthetic beauty around them.