The moment I stepped into high school as my small, freshman self, I knew that the terrifyingly towering picture of a high school in a movie was a myth. High school had been amazing since the beginning, and my transition into the school was as easy as could possibly be. I did enlist the help of a few upperclassmen to assist me on maneuvering my way around the large edifice, but I overall could independently locate my path to success. My biggest fear, though, was changing my physical look, whether it would be by getting glasses or braces.
People with glasses that I am close to told me dark tales of breaking them, losing them, and refusing to wear them in fear that their personalities would “evolve along with the shift in view”. The few weeks before I visited the eye clinic were a pain because I knew in the back of mind that the blurriness of the digital clock above my television was not because of the sole fact that I hadn’t slept well. I always knew that I needed glasses.
I did a bit of research to understand if it was just my external environment run by technology that was quickly damaging my vision, and thankfully, genetics played a role. Because my family could not function without lenses, my vision was guaranteed to have an issue. I would need to prepare myself to meet a pair of glasses. Contacts weren’t an option because I never enjoyed fingers or stray objects coming near the eyeball. Within the hour, it was confirmed that my eyes did not, in fact, have perfect vision. I felt a mix of emotions in that second- the thrill of changing myself (because I was going through a phase of transitioning who I wanted to be), the fear of becoming dependent on glasses to see normally, and the realization that for the rest of my life, I would need lenses to see how everyone else did.
For a moment, when I understood that, it was as if I sobered up a bit. The excitement of becoming a new person disappeared because it struck me that this was who I would be from now on.
It took some time to choose the right frame because I am a perfectionist who either has it done right or not done at all. I will never forget the second I put them on with my prescription lenses in. I closed my eyes (to the point where I was squeezing them) and wore them. I opened my eyes and looked up at the large billboard talking about a discount for new customers. I remember saying, “Oh my gosh” and not looking away from the red print on the sign for a good five minutes. When I walked into the clinic, I couldn’t read the words even if I squinted. Here I was, able to read it perfectly without the skip of a single letter.
It’s strange how I worry so much about new experiences. I had reason to believe high school would be a tough, long four years where friends turned their backs on each other, but that was a misconception that I can safely blame movies and the media for. I had no reason to think that wearing glasses would be a burden on me. The Monday that I walked into school, I wanted to count how many people wore glasses.
Surprisingly, there were more than I expected. The people wearing them were laughing and smiling, too. I had the choice of forever envying that happiness and never appreciating my perfected vision or being like them and embracing it as part of myself. I decided on the latter.
In a way, though, it was as if wearing the new glasses not only fixed my vision, but they changed my perspective on my world, too.
