Gifted students life takes another shock turn years after clawing out her eyeballs and leaving herself blind

A woman who was left permanently blind after ripping out her own eyeballs out during a meth-induced meltdown has given a life update seven years after losing her sight. 

Kaylee Muthart, 27, was once a straight-A, star pupil, but got in with the wrong crowd and began partying heavily, which eventually led her to drug abuse, a mental breakdown and finally her disturbing act of self-harm in February 2018.

In an interview with The Mirror, Muthart revealed she had been working as a dishwasher at a Florida restaurant, but was let go over an incident which involved feeding kittens outside the premises.

Muthart got a job washing dishes at The Rose Villa restaurant in Ormond Beach, Florida. She said she got fired in December for feeding a cat with eight kittens outside the restaurant, something the property manager had allegedly discouraged.

Muthart, who has been wearing prosthetic eye implants since 2020, was allegedly told to stop but did not. She said she has no regrets about feeding the cats.

I am feeling positive after the loss of my last job, she told the Mirror. Being fired never feels good, but I could walk away knowing that I did what I believed in my heart was right. 

I could not in good conscience leave every night, knowing that there was a kitty right there waiting to be fed so I gave it my meal that I would get for my shift - and ordered it especially for the kitty. 

I would not have been able to walk away from that knowing that I didn’t do what I was convinced in my heart to do.

Kaylee Muthart, then 20 years old, gouged out both of her eyeballs in February 2018 while she was high on methamphetamine (Pictured: Muthart in the hospital after the horrific tragedy)

Muthart (pictured after her accident with her prosthetic eyes) said she was fired from her job in December for feeding cats outside the The Rose Villa restaurant in Ormond Beach, Florida.

Muthart said she wasnt overly reliant on the dishwashing gig, as her boyfriend, Alex George, is extremely hard working and makes sure she is supported.

George, who works in finance, is in his forties and has known Muthart for around nine years. 

She also suggested that she is on some sort of government disability following the loss of her sight.

Thanks to the taxpayers in our country, I am able to pay the majority of my own bills by myself and the job was helping me meet other financial needs and I have gotten behind on some of those - but all of my necessities such as rent, power, food and water are being met, she said.

Muthart hopes shell be offered a new job in May after meeting and working with a recruiter who provides rehabilitation programs for blind or visually impaired people.

She is also looking to get her high school diploma from Penn Foster, an accredited online school for grades 9-12 that is based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 

When she was 17, she had dropped out of her high school in South Carolina, where she is originally from, so she could work more and save for college. Years later, she plans to finally attend college.

Muthart is a devout Christian and said shed also be starting a non-profit to help all of God’s creations (to aid with addiction recovery and mental health challenges). 

Muthart is supported by her boyfriend Alex George, but she has aspirations to be a motivational speaker and start a nonprofit focused on addiction recovery and mental health issues

I will be motivational speaking at as many places as possible to share my story. I hope to one day play every instrument known to man but in the near future I will be continuing to learn guitar and piano and starting the drums, she said.

The day she lost her eyes, she was just 20 years old and took a larger dose of methamphetamine than she normally did, which caused her to lose herself in a psychotic episode.

As Muthart tells it, she was on her way to church when a friend she had been staying with drove by and called out the window, ‘I locked up the house. Do you have the other key?’

She said that in her warped mind, being locked out of her home was a sign ‘that my sacrifice is the key to saving the world.’

I thought everything would end abruptly, and everyone would die, if I didnt tear out my eyes immediately, she told Cosmopolitan in March 2018. I dont know how I came to that conclusion, but I felt it was, without doubt, the right, rational thing to do immediately.

‘So I pushed my thumb, pointer, and middle finger into each eye. I gripped each eyeball, twisted, and pulled until each eye popped out of the socket — it felt like a massive struggle, the hardest thing I ever had to do.’

The drugs she had taken numbed the pain. She said if a pastor had not heard her screaming, ‘I want to see the light!’ and come running, she likely would have clawed into her brain.

‘He later said, when he found me, that I was holding my eyeballs in my hands. I had squished them, although they were somehow still attached to my head.’

‘I remember thinking that someone had to sacrifice something important to right the world, and that person was me… I got on my hands and knees, pounding the ground and praying, "Why me? Why do I have to do this?"’

Doctors performed an emergency surgery to fully remove what was left of her eyes in an attempt to preserve her optic nerves and to prevent infection 

Muthart is pictured after her emergency surgery. Friends and family described seeing red tissue (muscle filling the socket) and a white spot (her optic nerve endings) where her eyeballs had been

Muthard was taken to the hospital and had to be pinned down by at least seven people. She fought so hard that her wrists hurt from the restraints for days.

Doctors performed an emergency surgery to fully remove what was left of her eyes in an attempt to preserve her optic nerves and to prevent infection.

She explained that when she asked friends and family who visited her what she looked like without eyes, they described seeing red tissue (muscle filling the socket) and a white spot (her optic nerve endings) where her eyeballs had been.

‘Of course there are times when I get really upset about my situation, particularly on nights when I cant fall asleep, she has said.

But truthfully, Im happier now than I was before all this happened. Id rather be blind than dependent on drugs.’

Muthart says the catalyst to her spiraling happened when a friend gave her a joint laced with meth when she was 19.

It sent her into a transcendent high that she believed brought her closer to god.

She continued to chase that high for years. The teen became hooked on meth, progressing from smoking it to injecting it.