At the age of 15, I was able to see life a little (or a lot) clearer. This event has changed my life for the better even though during the time I thought it was a very dramatic and emotional part of my life. I grew up having to use a flashlight to read my book after the second page. I never would read for class, and you could see that in my grades. I couldn’t see street names from far away like my brother could. I always excelled on the hearing tests that we got thrown into during elementary school and sports physicals. Though when it came to the vision tests, I banked on getting just enough amount time to memorize every line of the letter test with both eyes before having to close one.
Yes, I became a four-eyed nerd.
My reading had gotten so bad that I would constantly have a headache when I opened a book, and to this day I read much slower than my fellow classmates because for around 10 years of my life I couldn’t see.
I cried a lot. I didn’t think I was going to be Bree anymore, the girl who didn’t follow in my dad's footsteps with bad eyesight, and the girl with the super long eyelashes that were like spiders crawling out of my eyes. As a 15-year-old high school girl going into her sophomore year, I was now the glasses-wearing cheerleader. My mom and I spent days and weeks trying to find a pair of glasses I liked. I tried taking the most time possible in hopes that during that time, my eyes would magically turn into 20/20. I soon realized that that was not going to happen.
I finally got glasses during the summer going into sophomore year, and at that moment in time, I spent practically all my time at cheer practice, so the only ones that had to get used to the “new Bree” were my family and teammates.
I will say this once and only once; I hate touching my eyes so contacts are not an option!
Sophomore year began and a decent amount of my classmates didn’t even know who I was at a glance. People who have known me from the day I was born couldn’t recognize me, and I all of a sudden had to carry around glasses cleaner and say bye bye to sunglasses!
I absolutely love my glasses now, because I have not been able to see any better in my whole life, though, some days I wish they never existed, and I looked like I did four years ago. At high school dances, I wouldn’t wear them the whole night, and my senior pictures half were done with and half were without.
Going into college, I wish that people got to see the OG Bree with no glasses and long eyelashes, though now it's not normal to see me like that. After a while, I finally began realizing glasses didn’t ruin my life, and they only made it better. They made me appreciate my personality because no matter what you wear or what you look like you can’t hide what is inside.
So now that I have accepted the fact that I am still myself, I appreciate that my dad decided to get identical glasses as me so that it makes family pictures even more comical. Also, I am glad that Lexie gets a kick out of my prescription sunglasses that you can see my eyeballs through that she makes me put them on even in the winter!
