Four Eyes

Last October, I stopped wearing contact lenses. They started occasionally feeling uncomfortable a few years ago, and by this time last year, they were bugging me almost every day. They weren’t painful, just irritating. At my yearly check-up, the optometrist told me that the fit and prescription were fine, and sent me on my way.

I have glasses for back-up use, and with a fresh prescription, I picked out some new frames. When I started wearing them, they were so comfortable that I reached for them every day instead of my scratchy contacts. This may seem unremarkable, but for me, it was a big step.

I got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten. A friend of the family noticed that my right eye was turning in, and suggested I might need to see an eye doctor. I was diagnosed with a “Lazy Eye.” The doctor wanted me to wear an eye patch over my good, hard-working eye to get that lazy eye to step it up and start doing its job, but it didn’t help–probably because I didn’t wear it very much. I didn’t like the eye patch; everything was blurry with it on, and at age five I didn’t see the point and I cheated.

So I had to wear glasses. I was a four-eyes. I am lucky; when my vision is corrected by glasses or contact lenses, my eye does not turn in. My prescription was quite strong even as a child, so my glasses made my eyes look unnaturally large. I didn’t really mind wearing them until I got to middle school. That’s when I decided that I looked better without them. I took them off sometimes during the school day, but only when I wasn’t looking directly at people. A glasses-free side view was the most I could do, because I was very self-conscious about my eye turning in. People commented on that even more than on my thick lenses.

In eighth grade, my life changed. I started wearing contact lenses. Suddenly, I wasn’t homely Judy any more. From that day until about a year ago, I rarely wore glasses, except at home. If I ever wore glasses in public, I noticed–or thought I did–that people looked at me differently. Wearing glasses, I went back to being homely Judy with the crossed eye.

Ever since my eye-patch failure, I have disliked eye exams. My left eye does it’s job and reads the charts on the wall, but my right eye just can’t. The letters start to swim and merge, my eye starts to water from the effort, and I can’t pass the test. About 15 years ago, I started seeing a new optometrist after we moved. She checked my vision and told me I have amblyopia. She didn’t call it Lazy Eye, she called it Amblyopia.

One eye simply cannot be corrected as much as the other. No judgement. No need for shame. She also told me that my experience of the swimmy, bouncing letters on the chart when I read with my right eye is typical of amblyopia. I wasn’t failing the vision test after all. I started to feel less ashamed of my underperforming eye, and even have some compassion. It wasn’t lazy, it was just weaker than the other one.

When I started wearing my glasses again full-time, I had to face my homely-Judy identity. I know it’s not really a thing–glasses are fashionable, and I still look like myself whether I have frames on or not. I actually like the idea that some of my wrinkles and under-eye shadows are hidden by my frames. It’s my emotional memory, not current facts, that makes me feel like wearing glasses means that I am less likable and more vulnerable.

One benefit of getting older is being able to hold those feelings that come from painful memories at arm’s length. I can evaluate them and understand the shame I felt as a child, and then put them away. I feel the old fears and insecurities, but I don’t care as much if my eyes look oddly large or if I’m not looking my best in glasses. A year back into the four-eye life, I don’t equate my worth with how my eyes look or perform. I don’t really think about it.

Well, sometimes I do. With my daughter’s wedding coming up, I went back to the eye doctor on a mission. I wanted soft contact lenses. I didn’t want to wear glasses for the wedding and the pictures.

The lenses I abandoned a year ago were hard lenses, the gas permeable plastic kind. The optometrist did the exam, found the right soft lenses for me, taught me how to put them in and take them out, and sent me home with some to try. Amazing! They are so comfortable! I don’t wear them every day, because my glasses are just so easy; I use them 1 or 2 times a week when I want to be my glasses-free self.

Either way, two or four eyes, I’m comfortable. The eye turn, though–I’m still working on being ok with that.