I’ve been wearing glasses full-time for eleven years now, and contacts for five years. I like to consider myself a master of the lens, as I’ve gone through a bunch of emotional times with my glasses and contacts. Other specs-wearers can relate to the many struggles of owning them, and the first encounters are always memorable. Here are some of the thoughts that went through my mind when I got my first pair of glasses and contacts.

Contacts:

1. Cool, my first pair of contacts!

2. How on planet Earth am I supposed to attach this thing to my eyeball?

3. What even IS a contact? Like, what is it made of?

It feels like a jellyfish of sorts.

4. Oh my God, I think one fell in the sink.

I can't even find it because I NEED TO BE ABLE TO SEE IT.

5. OK, I think I finally got them in.

6. NOPE. I put one on inside out.

This might be the least comfortable eye sensation, ever.

7. Much better!

8. Time to go back to the basics.

It's so relieving to take out contacts at the end of a long day.

Glasses:

1. I'm ready for my first pair of glasses!

2. This chair looks like a rejected Transformer.

3. "Tell me which one looks clearer; one or two?"

If you hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have even known that you changed the lens. So...two?

4. There are so many choices!

5. Ok, should I pick the safer, generic frames?

6. Or should I pick the daring ones?

7. Ok world. You can throw everything you've got at me, now that I have crystal clear vision.

Just don't throw it at my face and break my glasses.

8. "I can take my glasses off for this. I don't need them- oh no. I don't know where I put them."

I feel vulnerable and afraid.

9. Yay, I've found them!

Well, this is gonna be quite an experience from here on out.