The girl who lost one of her eyes

When she was nine years old, this girl had an abscess on her leg that spread to her face. It became so rampant that the doctors had to remove her right eye to control the infection. Since then she wore an artificial eye on that side — immaculately made to resemble her natural eye in the colour and even the fine details of the pupil. Her external eye muscles were sewn onto the prosthetic eye so that it moved together with her good eye on the left, only with minimal squint on the extreme lateral gazes. You could barely tell that it was artificial — I certainly couldn’t, until I closely examined with a torch!

4.May2011

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When she was in her teens, she had a boyfriend. She decided to tell her boyfriend that her right eye was actually fake, and her boyfriend left her immediately.

Later in her twenties she met a guy, and they fell in love and got together. When she was deliberating whether to tell this guy the truth about her eyes, there was anxiety and she wasn’t sure what to expect.

But she told him the truth — and the guy looked at her and replied, “So what? I’ve only got one eye too.”

Just a few years ago, the guy had got into a major motor vehicle accident with severe facial trauma and skull fractures. The doctors had to fix a metal plate in his forehead and tie his left cheekbone together with wires. His left eye was still intact, but the optic nerves had been cut. The scars have healed up well now and only a very slight displacement of his left eye is what remains. Just by looking at him, you couldn’t tell that he was seeing only from his right eye. She had not known until then.

“I guess we were made for each other,” the woman said to me, sitting beside him. They are soon approaching their seventies, and have been together as husband and wife for more than forty years now. This is a true story.

The guy and his girlfriend

This friendly guy had a stable girlfriend. Yet he was having sex with other girls, unbeknownst to his partner, and he was still doing it. Without condoms too, because he didn’t have them around when the situation called. He had already made two women pregnant. He already had a few children around in the community. He confessed to me.

28.Apr2011

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He came in when I was working in the aboriginal GP clinic in the Northern Territory, wanting to have a check up for sexually-transmitted diseases.

He had good intentions, if I dare say. I could sense his frustration at knowing what is right and not living it out — and don’t we all know the feeling well. Yet as I talked to him I came to know that he had already made some other changes in his life that was worth commending. Decided to stand up to peer pressure and cut down on alcohol consumption. Starting to pick up the discipline to exercise. “But I still don’t know how to control this sexual urge,” he said as-a-matter-of-factly, “I just can’t control it, y’know.”

He saw the tray of free condoms in the room and grabbed to store more than a few in his pocket, with some embarrassment. I never paid much attention to that tray — now I know how important it is to refill it!

“How would you feel if your partner did the same?” I asked.

“Oh I’ve heard that one before. … But I won’t do it when I get married, it’ll be different,” he answered.

“How do you know you can control yourself after you get married, when you can’t do it now?”

“Yeah,” he shook his shoulders. I was sure the question had crossed his mind before too.

I opened my mouth but I stumbled to take it much further. If I said anything more, I felt, I would have been a true hypocrite. It doesn’t have to be sexual dishonesty. My words would come back to bite me.

Eunice + Melvin’s wedding

16.Apr2011

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What makes a good wedding? There were no white Mercedes convertibles parked outside the church. No Christian Louboutin stilettos in the dressing room. No Tiffany & Co. diamonds on the altar. The location was not an exotic paradise in Bali. The hands were not immaculately manicured; they showed signs of hard work. There was no front put up to impress, and the people who turned up you could relate to everyday.

This is an honest girl being wed to an honest boy. All the very best for Melvin and Eunice. Thanks for letting me be part of this joyous celebration.

Here is a small selection of photos…

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