astigmatism ↠ lashton

chapter one.

Chapter one.

You know that saying: When you die all life's questions are answered. Ashton didn't believe that. He knew that once you die, you die. You are just a rotting, smelly corpse buried 6 feet under a meaningless headstone, or just the ashes of your lifeless body in a vase on a shelf or scattered somewhere which was once important.

Ashton couldn't fathom the fact that people were gullible enough to believe that load of crap. And it made his head spin that people would kill themselves just to see this through and to test the theory.

That is ridiculous, how can that theory even possibly be true? How would the world have ever came to learn this? As far as Ashton knew people don't die and then come back to life to tell the tales of the other side- not that ashton thinks there is one.

He doesn't mean to sound like the kind of person who comes around and curses at the rainbows and kicks puppies. Its not the words of a depressed boy. Its simply logic.

No one is ever going to have all of the answers, and we will die with half of our life questions unanswered. No matter what studies scientists do or how many books people write about the afterlife, its never going to uncover the mystery the world is.

Everything will always be blurry.

At least thats how Ashton see's it.

Except- not trying to be attention seeking -its much worse for Ashton. He literally can't see clearly. He's not just talking about life's questions. Everything is literally blurry.

Ashton has astigmatism, which pretty much means everything is blurry no matter what distance, no matter what prominence, everything is distorted and wavy.

He could go into all the scientific stuff about how his eye apparently isn't the right shape and stuff but, you get the picture.

He learned all about his condition from google. He has never had a test or gotten help about it, he knew it and embraced it.

Of course as Ashton got older, he found it was getting worse and worse. It went from everything being a little out of focus, to Ashton not even being able to see detail in anything at all. He could be walking down his school hall and the only way he could manoeuvre through the people was by dodging the dark smears that he could see. And he still bumped into people all the time.

He knew he needed help, but the last thing he wanted to do was hassle his mum with having a blind son. Sometimes we couldn't afford milk let alone glasses.

But he needed to start thinking about himself for once. It would only cause bigger problems if Ashton didn't seek help. Maybe he would actually go blind.

With that, Ashton made his decision and trudged back up the grassy hill that takes him back home, he knew he was going the right direction because there were little brown splodges everywhere. His whole neighbourhood owned dogs and they poo'ed everywhere. Ashton turned up his nose in disgust and avoided the gross little stink bombs.

The august weather cut through him like a knife. Ashton did not like the cold; it always felt like the world was punishing everyone for being happy in the summer. So he decided to run home to warm himself up.

By the time he reached the house his mums car was already there. So he came in through the back door, because if he see's his mums overly tired and stressed face he will, in no doubt, rethink his decision.

He walked straight into his room and shut the door gently. He sat on his bed for half an hour trying to prepare what he was going to say. He could just do the casual, 'Hey mum so guess what I can't see.' or he could be serious and tell his mum all the logic, 'Look mum, there is something i haven't told you, for pretty much my whole life everything has been blurry, its because my eye shape isn't a sphere, its more like a football shape.' She was more likely to laugh at the serious one, and she was more likely to tell him to go away if he said it casually, so he decided to do a little bit of both.