I had been meaning to get new glasses for months and then the pandemic happened. With my screen time probably doubling during shelter-in-place my eyes have been miserable. The last time I got new glasses four years ago, the doctor said to me, “You may want to get bifocals,” and would you know that my pride just wouldn’t have it? Me! Young 34yo Walter with bifocals? I assured the doctor I’d consider it for next time. Fast forward to COVID-times when I haven’t been reading books for 3 months because of the eye-straining.

So I made an appointment two weeks ago when the eye doctors opened back up. My time at the office was miserable. Plastic shields were up, masks were on, tape on the floor told me where to stand. The frames were off limits to my touch! I told the worker what I was looking for and he brought me just FOUR pairs to try on. Normally, I’d spend hours in agony trying to decide what to select. Let me tell you—I have a lot of shit to keep in mind when picking out frames!

For example, do these glasses make me stand out in a crowd? (I’m insecure so I want to blend in with the background.) Might the glasses have the tiniest touch of femininity? (I’m a misogynist and a homophobe and need to look very masc.) Might the frames enhance the massive size of my eyeballs? (I have freakishly massive eyeballs and I’m ugly.)

Do I sound too dramatic?

I got my first glasses when I was 5 years old. The lens for my lazy eye was a quarter inch to a centimeter thick! One day, when I was wearing the glasses while they were still new to me, my mom and I went to the C&C Supermarket (where I’d later work as a teenager) and for a moment I was alone in the store with the very important job of watching my mom’s purse in the shopping cart. Two young girls were standing nearby and I looked up at one who exclaimed after seeing me, “Oh my god! Look! He’s soooo cute!” Cute!? Me!? I really beamed inside! The other girl turned and looked at me and exclaimed, “Oh my god! His eyes are SO big!” And they both laughed. They laughed at me! And that beaming feeling inside turned to confusion and to shame. I put my head down and felt miserable.

That was the moment when I began believing there was something seriously wrong with me, something freakishly wrong with my eyes.

On a later day, I was walking alone down a dirt driveway, and suddenly remembering I had those stupid glasses on my face I took them off, threw them at the gravel road, and I stepped on them. Immediately I freaked out! We didn’t have a lot of money and my mom had given me a stern “these are very expensive and you have to take good care of them” talk. What had I done!? I concocted a quick story, and, crying crying, I told my mom I had been running and they fell off and I accidentally stepped on them. While I waited for days for them to be replaced I reached a sad conclusion—I just couldn’t see well without them. My eyes were bad! And that was the moment when I accepted my spectacled fate.

But the poison of believing there was something seriously wrong with my eyes had already reached the core of my being. I was a broken boy; a defect; a freak with massive eyes. I believed that! And all that suffering came up last year in an ayahuasca ceremony. I saw very clearly the infinite mean spiritedness I had directed at myself for so long; that I had directed at young, innocent, sweet boy-me. How I hated myself, and hated my eyes, and hated how I looked! I cried and cried in that ceremony and I begged forgiveness from myself. I thought I had done all the crying I could! I’ll love my eyes and my glasses from now on! I promised I would.

And then I was at the eye doctors last week and the four frames were sitting on the table before me. My mask was on, my face was sweaty, and the worker was impatient and mostly unhelpful. My eyes were strained and hurting and my old scratched glasses were steaming up from the mask. I was so miserable, y’all. So super miserable! I was stressed. I just couldn’t wait to get out of there. I selected these new frames in about a minute! It’s always taken me hours to select frames before. “Cursed COVID!,” I was telling my therapist just an hour later when I got home. I was telling him about the anxiety that came up at the eye doctor’s office.

I barely said any words to the therapist when the tears and memories came. Oh, it wasn’t COVID that stressed me out! It was the eyes again! My freakishly big eyes! Did you know that on a first date once a guy asked me to take off my glasses so he could see what I looked like without them, and then he never responded to my messages after? Did you know the intensity of my fear when I was in high school that if I selected the wrong frames, with the tiniest element of girlishness, that I might alert the whole world that I’m gay? Did you know I’ve feared that I’ve been single most of my life simply because my eyes look big? All that nonsense came bubbling up, from some dark, forgotten place within. What a total bastard I’ve been to myself.

I know enough to know that I can’t promise to myself I’ll love my eyes and having glasses forever more, because it seems like the healing is never over. I know there’ll by more tears again some day. And more to learn and come to love about myself and all the infinite complexity within.

And for now, I just want to say
Thank you to the eye doctors
Thank you to vision, even shitty vision
Thank you to my freakishly big eyes
And thank you to these fancy new bifocals