Goodbye Glasses

I’ve spent a lot of my life hating my glasses.

It wasn’t the hassle of wearing them, or the contact lenses that followed a few years after. That part was never the real issue. They never stopped me from doing any of the things I wanted to, so I didn’t really mind it.

It was because they made me feel different, awkward, even…ugly.

Once I got contacts, I almost never wore my glasses again in public until I finished college.

And now, I never have to wear them again.

Waking up in the morning and being able to see the world is a truly beautiful thing. So is being able to see when I shave my legs. And I do like not having to take out contacts before going to bed. It’s also going to be lovely to not worry about losing a contact if I accidentally bump my eye with my camera on someone’s wedding day, or squint through dirty lenses when the wind blows dust in my face – which is the real reason I decided to give them up. Life is much easier without glasses and contacts.

But a little part of me is sad to let them go.

Because they were part of my identity. Wearing glasses is like being a part of a club. A club of imperfection, of being called four-eyes, of learning to have confidence in the things about yourself that it can be hard for other people to look past. As a kid, mine were the perfect symbol for my good grades and studious, book-loving persona – a love of learning that I have come to appreciate and accept, but desperately wanted to leave behind so many years ago because it certainly didn’t make me “cool”.

Having or not having glasses doesn’t change any of that. But they will always, for me, stand for being authentic and embracing the things that make me unique, and learning to believe in myself no matter how I look to the world.

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(PS. In the spirit of authenticity, I decided not to remove the red spot in my eye from the photo above that is essentially a bruise left over from surgery. It’s not the most attractive, but it’s my battle scar for now. Also, now that I can see normally, I realized just how blind I was when I put my glasses on for that photo, and I am so glad I made the choice to get better vision.)