Anyways, the doctor checked my power, and found nothing. “Your power has stabilized, why do you keep coming every year?” 

Because I can’t see?

Seemingly offended by the statement, she takes her, what I believe, is a torch and beams it through my eyes.

“RIGHT! You do have a condition, exophoria”, the Doctor told me. 

While the reaction does seem rather euphoric, exophoria refers to a tendency of one’s eyes to move outwards. And before you begin, NO I am not Tera. 

Tera, generally refers to exotropia, where one’s eyes are visibly outward. In my case, the eye muscles compensate for the latent tendency of the eye to move away. Except when I’m tired, then the muscles just let the eyes do whatever they want.

It’s been a week, and I have already grown tired of explaining to people how I’m really not like that one relative they have who looks one way and sees another. 

With all due respect, I don’t understand why it’s such a point of interest for people, it really is just yet another condition that people have to suffer with. The entire notion that people have to produce a new word to term these people’s misery is baffling, and makes me angry. 

Maybe it would annoy me less if I actually had the said condition, but I don’t. Not only are you obnoxiously calling people names, you’re doing it wrong. One can’t visibly notice my eyes going outwards, so the relative comparison is just hysteria.

How has my life changed since the diagnosis? 

Not much, except that you could probably look through my window at any given moment and see me drowning under a pile of sadness or exercising my eyes with a pen. The treatment for exophoria is to hold a pen in front of your eyes, focusing on the tip, and moving the pen back and forth. 

I don’t know how well this has worked, but I look dumb. I looked dumb doing it in an empty classroom when my friend barged in and burst into laughter. Unaware of my issue, she thought I had finally lost it. 

When I first tried it, the pen was scaring me. The nib would go away, then come closer, more and more, until my two eyes would converge and lose focus of it. 

I have begun to stare at it for so long, this feels like a romance no one asked for, and even then it seems unrequited. The pen feels awfully avoidant. The distance makes her clearer than ever, but the moment I move closer it blurs up again. 

In honesty, find someone who looks at you the way I look at this pen now. Who’d know that a Tk10 object could demand such undivided attention. On the brighter side, I have acquired a hobby, staring at pens.