Tales of a Four-Eyed Nothing

I have worn glasses for most of my life. I got my first pair when I was in second grade. They were the ugliest pair of glasses ever made. Be sure that I had no say in what kind I wanted; they were handed to me. I hated them. I instinctively knew that people who wore glasses were not pretty. I hid them in my desk as soon as I got to school. There was a black girl who would steal them and taunt me with not giving them back and whom I could only placate by giving her my crayons.

There was a boy in second grade named Ray who loved me. I didn't like Ray. He followed me around like a puppy dog. One day he came to school with one of those heart-shaped chocolate boxes. Instead of chocolates, he filled it with hairpins and jewels he had taken from his mother without her consent. He gave the box to me. I was embarrassed. His mother came to school during lunch demanding her things back. I was more embarrassed. She picked through the box and took what was most valuable, but let me have a few things. There were hairpins with little birds on the end with different colored wings and jeweled eyes. My mother still has those in a drawer somewhere.

The day I got glasses Ray stopped loving me. That is a hard lesson for a seven-year-old to learn.

I hated myself. I thought I was hideous. I pined fruitlessly for boys I couldn't even talk to because I was so sure they wouldn't even know who I was. I disappeared behind my glasses.

As I got older, things got worse. I got bifocals. Not the progressive ones; I had the ones with the visible separate lenses. I can only assume my parents secretly hoped I would join a convent.

I had always been clumsy and nerdy and whether I had glasses or not, I would still have been those things to some degree. It's not like if I didn't have glasses I would have been homecoming queen. But I could have been...somebody. I was nobody. Maybe that's not how the rest of the world saw me, but that's how I felt. And when that's how you feel, that's what you are. I thought if I could wear contacts, my life would change. I would emerge from my proverbial cocoon and spread my wings. I would have a boyfriend. I would kiss someone. I would be noticed. I couldn't get contacts. My ophthalmologist couldn't recommend it to a girl with astigmatism. And if the doctor would not give his okay, my mother considered the case closed.

I was under her thumb. It never occurred to me to rebel, to find a different doctor or a different answer. I felt defeated. At sixteen. If I had any self-confidence at all, it was tucked into some far recess of my brain where it could not easily be retrieved. I went to the Gap with my mother once and the cashier asked if I modeled. I looked at her like she was out of her mind. She told me I was really pretty (this may have been an attempt to flatter me into buying more socks). I didn't believe her.

When you are young you cannot see the end of anything. Any hardship seems interminable. This is the worst part of being young. I couldn't, at that, point, see the day when anyone—least of all myself—would ever look at me as something even remotely attractive.

I hated women who wore glasses but didn't need them. They wore them as a fashion accessory and I thought, If you knew what it was like, you would not be so careless.

I got contacts right before college. Turning 21, losing my virginity, leaving home—all these things pale in comparison to life before and after contacts. I saw things in myself that I had no clue were there. Good things! Things not even related to how I looked. Good humor, creativity, tenderness. All I ever saw for ten years was an ugly kid with glasses.

A friend came over to my parents' house once and saw an old picture of me in my glasses. He laughed at how I looked. I wanted to punch him. If you knew what it was like, you would not be so careless.

It's hard not to blame my parents for their recklessness with the fragile ego of a young girl. I was tortured over this and they never tried to save me.

I still wear glasses sometimes, but I don't mind now. They actually look good on me. I picked them out myself.