I have this idea, this prediction, this foreboding, of what this entry will be. When it's done. When I finish it.

It will not, most likely, be close at all to what I've envisioned.

Oh well.

---

Nobody will understand. Maybe one person.

---

I get the urges all the time. Every 10 or 20 seconds. For years I've had them.

Usually, most of the time, I've been able to resist.

But. Not. This. Time.

The urge this morning was as if from the Borg.

Resistance, this time, was futile indeed. I barely even tried.

Stupidity, also, may be relevant, most of the time. This time, I ignored it. Relevance be damned.

---

Nobody will get how hard it was for me to send that invitation. Nobody will understand how easy, effortless, reflexive, it was for me to send that invitation.

Maybe one person.

---

My heart leapt out of my chest. It bounced around the room. It finally settled back into place, vibrating with anticipation. I absorbed and endured.

I felt.

Joy.

Terror.

---

When nothing is par, then anything, anything at all, is everything.

There is nothing else.

Nothing.

---

We ended up on this damn road.

Life provides its own metaphors.

How many times have we taken this road?

Numbers don't go high enough.

Our entire relationship has been on this road.

---

It was a nice time. Really really nice. Just what I needed.

---

Nobody will understand.

Maybe one person.

---

It never got better, or easier, or bearable.

It got worse and worse with every passing second and minute and hour and day and week and month.

Six months. Nearly a year before that.

Everybody said it would get easier. Everybody was wrong.

So very wrong.

---

My lunch was yummy. My company was yummy.

---

So, right now, I'm sad.

But that's sooooooooooo much better than devastated, ruined, wrecked, almost suicidal.

I'll take sad, every time and forever, over those alternatives.

Maybe one person will understand why I did what I did. Why I had to do what I did. Why I'm glad I did what I did.

Why it was necessary.

Why I'm so happy to be merely sad right now.

---

I'm under no illusions.

Now I get to try again. To start again.

Maybe it will be easier, this time.

Not better, but maybe easier, for a while. Bearable, for a while.

That would be nice.

---

This entry is not what I envisioned.

Oh well.

Great, another fucking metaphor.

Deal with it. Or don't. I sincerely hope nobody still believes that I give a shit.

A flipping mosquito. Buzzing and darting and flitting around my mind. Just barely noticeable, most of the time, Until I notice it. Until it's there. Until it's everything that ever was or is or will be.

Or would have been or could have been or should have been.

Bzzzzzt.

People don't get it. I barely get it myself. Almost eight years now, and counting. Always counting.

Since.

It.

Happened.

I changed. Or the universe changed around me. Or I went insane. Or the universe went insane around me, to spite me.

Does it even matter what really happened? Or how? Or why?

Not to me.

Do the ends, maybe not justify, but perhaps neuter, the means?

Bzzzzzt.

This fucking mosquito. Sometimes I'm able to sum up the strength to swat at it, but I always miss, and all I manage to do is piss it off. Redouble its efforts to distract and annoy and irritate.

Anyway, I fell.

And this, this is my reward for it all. And my punishment.

Bzzzzzt.

I'm not so vain to believe that I'm the first person this has happened to, but I remain optimistically stupid enough to hope that maybe, just maybe, I'm the last.

The good news is that my vision has stabilized.

The bad news is that my vision has stabilized, in the wrong place.

No more fluctuating, no more discomfort. I'm only using the eye drops when I wake up in the morning, and by now I think this is more of a reflex than anything else.

But I can't see as well as I'd hoped, as well as I'd been led to expect.

I had my 8-week checkup at Joffe. Right off the bat, I told the nurse dude that I was spending most of the time wishing I still had glasses. He had me look through a machine at a balloon - not sure what that test is all about - and then old me to wait for the real eye-doctor.

I told her the same thing. I can't read scores scrolling on the bottom of a TV. I can't read menus behind the counters at fast-food places. I see ghost-images of balls when I play pool. I remember fondly the pre-LASIK days when I saw much better, albeit with glasses.

She had me do the standard test, and I read the 20/20 line on the eye chart for her. Then I reminded her that there's a difference between making out the letters, and seeing them clearly. I was not seeing them clearly. Not at all.

So then she had me do that series of tests where I look at two different lines, one after the other, and declare which one I can see better. This is the same test that everyone who's ever worn glasses has taken. It's how they figure out what prescription you need.

Every other time in my life, when comparing these pairs of lines, I've always had to make them switch back and forth for some of the pairs. Some of the pairs were just too similar at first glance, so I had to see them again before declaring a winner.

But not this time.

For whatever reason, there was never any doubt at all. Two was better than one. Four was better than three. Six was better than five, eight was better than seven, and ten was better than nine. And, each and every time, there was absolutely no doubt. The difference was glaringly obvious. Like, twelve wasn't just better than eleven, it was a million times better. Those even-numbered lines were clear and sharp. Those odd-numbered lines were blurry and/or ghosty.

The results of this test seem to have convinced the doctor that I wasn't just pulling her leg for some reason. She'd already determined that there was no swelling or scarring or dryness in my eye. The only remaining explanation for my less-than-perfect vision was that they'd fucked something up. Or, as she put it, I would most likely need a second procedure to make everything right.

She also said that we could start discussing that after I'd gone three months. So, sometime in June or July, it's extremely likely that I'll be going under the knife/laser again.

I hope so. I hope they don't try/succeed in talking me out of it. There will be no cost to me, and I'm sure they don't relish the idea of doing free procedures on people. But, as things are now, I'm not exactly a glowing endorsement for either LASIK in general or for Joffe in particular. That's gotta count for something.

I'm looking forward to it. I want to see better. To be fair, I already can see better. It's like the partial success I've had has given me a taste of how things could be. Will be, I'm convinced, once I heal from the second correction.

It's calming, actually. I'm no longer stressing about blurriness or ghost images. I'm no longer wondering just how long it's supposed to take for my vision to get better. Now I know that it's not going to get better on it's own, so I can stop worrying about it.

I'll have to go through all that crap again. The prescription eye-drops. The trying to sleep in the sunglasses. The burning and itchiness for a few weeks. But, after I go through all that one more time, I expect to finally have what I should have gotten the first time.

Clear vision. That will be nice.