The Boy Who Shattered Time

I never blinked.

No. No one would believe that. Yes, because it's a lie. Well, not entirely. Hypometric Blinking is exactly what the doctor called it. It's exactly what my Dad said was wrong with my eyes. It reduces my blink rate. It's not really a disease-but a symptom.

It can show up in several contexts, but in healthy people, it's sometimes just an unusual neurological quirk or linked to deep cognitive processing.

Apparently, I blinked less because I was emotionally repressed but that's bullshit. I was the happiest person there was. I had two loving parents, no sad backstory, I'm just Sulien, a half welsh, half black boy.

Of course we tried other hospitals but the medical tests never found anything wrong with me. The brain scans looked....normal. They referred to it as "neurological sluggishness" or "hypometric blinking with no clear origin."

Well, little did I know. My little foster brother, Neven used to say to me, " You've always blinked slow, Sulien, like your brain doesn't trust your eyes to shut for even a second."

Now I know better. He was right.

My body resisted blinking because deep down, my biology knew a blink meant danger.

I guess I could at least say I never blinked.

And when I finally did, the world cracked open.

Copyright © Oluwatofunmi E. Akinfe