[ RE ] - A character who struggles to understand .

I've been seeing things lately. Dark shapes, flitting in and out of shadows in my peripheral vision. Sometimes flares of light, coming out of nowhere and lasting for just long enough to leave me sure that I did n't imagine them. And vibrant, slowly drifting phosphenes even when I do n't rub my eyes. 
 
 Am I going insane? The psychiatrist prescribed me something. It made me feel slow and fuzzy, but it did n't stop the light show so I stopped taking it. Whenever I tell someone about it, a colleague or a stranger I stop to chat with, they look at me funny, like I am insane. They're always slightly uneasy after that. I stopped telling people. 
 
 The flares are getting brighter, the phosphenes lasting longer. Bright colors flashing across my field of vision even in my dreams, whether my eyes are open or closed. This ca n't be good for my mental health. I'm losing sleep and focus. I ca n't watch TV anymore because the flashing lights trigger my light show. I sleep with the light on to water down the effect. 
 
 I ca n't leave my house at night anymore. Electronic billboards, flashing neon signs, flickering streetlamps, they're all triggers. I do n't turn off the lights in my house. I leave to go to work and that's all. And the lights almost never stop. 
 
 All I can see are the lights. They drown out everything else. The psychiatrist wants me institutionalized, but he ca n't diagnose me with anything. He referred me to an expert on hallucination who said that I was n't hallucinating, at least not in any normal sense. Is it aliens? I'm all out of theories. 
 
 The expert is offering me thirty thousand dollars a year if I let him study me. Might as well, I ca n't work anymore anyways. And I might get a disorder named after me, if I'm lucky. 
 
 I feel a cold metal clamp on my head and I lay back on a chair that feels like it came right out of a dentist's office. The expert holds up cards in front of me, or so he tells me. All I can see are the lights. 
 
 There's nothing wrong with my brain's visual patterns. The expert sends me to an even more specialized expert, one who specializes in nerve damage. Because that's what's wrong with me. My optic nerves are damaged. The lights are the only things I'll ever see.
