Nina Cuesta

I hesitantly paced barefoot across the cold tile floors of my living room to the garage where my mother was slowly making a dent in the seemingly never empty dirty clothes basket. I took a deep breath, gathered my thoughts, and timidly squeaked open the door. I gazed directly into my mother’s confused eyes and asked the question that had frenzied my mind since about the age of six… “Mami, is it normal to see two of everything?” Her face became pale and immediately my father’s concerned voice was echoing from her cell phone. After endless visits to the ophthalmologist, school evaluations, and an excruciating eye surgery, it was determined that I was born with a permanent vision disability called diplopia, more commonly referred to as double vision. I was born with this condition and I never truly questioned its abnormality, for if I had never been able to see the way everyone else did, how would I have assumed there was anything wrong with me? There was a point in school where I saw myself drifting away from the academic accomplishments of my classmates, of which I suppose was caused by my condition making reading and writing a truly arduous mission. Moreover, I found it puzzling how in my brain I understood that I only had two hands, yet when I gazed down, I saw four hands and a sum of twenty fingers; something had to be wrong with me. While I was able to conclude that I must be defective, even today, I continuously ask myself what made me finally recognize that I was not ordinary. Such a question led to a more profound reflection of my self-esteem. As a child, I would play a constant guessing game between which image I viewed was real and which was a mere deception of my impediment. Similarly, as I grew older, I found myself in an incessant clash between the person I was around others and the person I was in solitude. I was never truly comfortable with who I was, and acceptance was something I craved more than anything in the world. Attempting to mask my genuine self, I created a phony image of myself to please the world and numb myself from the truth. Regardless of my caring friends and family, I used to always feel like an outcast to those around me. I saw myself as a constant contradiction to society’s “normal.” However, when I began my volunteer work with children with disabilities and shared in their delight for living each day, I began to realize how I never questioned my perception of the world until others began to impose their own truth into my life. So many years were wasted by comparing myself to others and expecting that adjusting my qualities would bring approval, contentment, and reconciliation into my draining mindset. Although seeing two of everything is not deemed conventional by the rest of the world, it is my bizarre reality that I now embrace. All images I perceive, both metaphorically and literally, are unique aspects of myself that expand my originality. Ultimately, no, seeing two of everything is not normal, but I would certainly not want it any other way.