Why Can’t I Close My Eyes?
The reason why you cannot close your left eye is because it is connected to the brain through the optic nerve. If you want to see something clearly, then you need to block out all other visual stimuli from entering into your mind. Otherwise, when you try to do so, some things will not come out of your head and become real in front of your eyes. You will still be able to see them, but they will appear blurry or even black.
If you are having problems closing your left eye, then there could be several reasons:
1) Your brain is not functioning properly due to damage caused by head trauma or disease.
There may have been a stroke or other neurological disorder that affects the function of the brain.
2) Your blood supply to the retina has been damaged causing blindness in one or both eyes.
3) A tumor has grown inside the eye.
In most cases, however, the problem lies in the middle part of your brain which controls how you react to different situations. When you are trying to concentrate on something, such as reading a book or writing a letter, your brain makes use of two parts of its processing power: One part is responsible for perceiving what is going on around us; another part deals with our reaction to these events. The part of the brain that deals with our reaction doesn’t need much power to work properly, so it can be easily suppressed.
When you were a child, you probably fell and bumped your head on the ground a few times. While falling, your vision was probably completely blurry. But as you picked yourself up and brushed yourself off, your sight came back to normal in less than an hour. This is because at that time, your brain was still developing.
As you grew older and gained more experience with the world around you through school, work, and social interaction, the brain developed new pathways that were dedicated to these activities. The brain is not a muscle that can be trained as much as it is a computer that stores information, and these pathways are developed whenever we use them.
When you read a book or write an essay, you must focus on each word in order to decipher it. This is different from speaking to someone in which you can focus on the meaning of what the person is saying rather than each word he or she says. Because of this, the pathways that are dedicated to reading and writing become stronger at the expense of the pathways that are used for daily interaction.
This is also why you tend to get sleepy whenever you read. The pathways responsible for reading and comprehending what is written require a lot of energy. In fact, they use up most of your brain’s resources which is why you must put the book down after a page or two since you become sleepy.
As I have mentioned earlier, the pathways responsible for daily living activities do not need much energy to function properly. This is why you can still interact with other people even if you are reading or writing a letter at the same time.
However, when you close your eyes and try to visualize something that you have seen in the past, your pathways responsible for daily living activities are suppressed. This is why you begin to see blackness; your brain uses most of its energy just to perceive what you are trying to visualize.
But if the pathways are weak, then they cannot be fully suppressed which means you will not be able to visualize anything no matter how hard you concentrate.
Since you have been trying to visualize a person that you saw a month ago, your brain decided to shut down both pathways at the expense of all your other senses. Without the pathways in charge of daily living activities, your brain shuts down the pathways responsible for reading and writing as well. This is why you find it difficult to make out what is written on the paper no matter how hard you try.
In essence, your brain is protecting you from straining yourself. If you were to continue, it’s possible that you might damage the nerves in your brain necessary for those pathways or even lose consciousness.
Since you are determined to see what is written on the paper anyway, your brain comes up with a compromise. By shutting down other senses, it frees up some energy that can be used to perceive what is in front of you.
In this case, what your brain decides to shut down are the pathways responsible for your sense of balance. This is why you feel dizzy and have to support yourself by holding onto the desk.
You do not know how long you can keep this state up before you pass out so you start visualizing the contents of the paper as quickly as you can.
It’s a letter and it’s to you from someone you know.
You find out that it’s from your mother and she has been apologising to you for what she did to you and your sister. She says that she loves you both more than anything in this world but she is a coward and could not bear the thought of losing either one of you.
The woman standing behind you is not your mother, but a maid your parents hired before they died. She has been bringing your sister and you to the park near your house everyday so that you can play. Your mother had also written a letter to her asking her to do so everyday in order to make sure that you are safe.
Your mother could not bring herself to meet you in person because she did not want you to see what she has become.
She is dying of some incurable disease.
Before her illness, your father was transferred to another city for work and she did not go with him. Instead, she stayed in the city where you two were born because she did not want to live without your father.
She heard that your father died in an accident at work some years after he moved. She was also undergoing treatment at the time so she could not go to his funeral.
Sources & references used in this article:
nocturnal lagophthalmos by WCND Eye – eyeeco.com
The Most Neglected Topic in Today’s Dry Eye Conversation by WCND Eye – eyeeco.com
Dry Eye Blog by TND Eye – eyeeco.com
The complications of blepharoplasty: their identification and management by JE Fulton – Dermatologic surgery, 1999 – Wiley Online Library
