Glasses

        I envy people who don’t wear glasses. What would it be like to have perfect vision? What would the world look like? Would I be able to see the fine print that I normally can’t even with the glasses? Do things appear clearer? More detailed? What does distance look like to them?

People who don’t wear glasses see the world as it is, as it is meant to appear before us, but that doesn’t make my vision or perception of things false does it? I still see the same world they do, just in a different way. The world around me is muddled and hard to make sense of. The words are hard to understand. Distance difficult to evaluate. People hard to understand.

If only I could show them my world. Let them see what it looks like to me. Show them that I can’t understand the world they build for me. Show them that it doesn’t work for me, yet I’m stuck living it. Yet every time they put on the glasses the world they see is distorted and nonsensical. Just as unbearable for them as their world is for me. And not every other person who has glasses understands either. After all, no two prescriptions are the same.

It’s isolating. You get stuck in this mentality that you’re all alone and no one else is capable of understanding. I wear these glasses to help me navigate their world, yet I still can’t see it clearly. I pay money to get the prescription updated, but it all moves too fast for me to catch up with. It becomes hard to connect to others. Hard to relate to their world as they can’t relate to your own, even if you have the tools to mimic theirs. It feels fake. Artificial. 

Then comes the pressure. The expectations of those around you to be a part of their world. But you can’t read the fine print, even with the glasses on, and it becomes harder and harder to follow the instructions as you feel yourself getting pulled farther and farther from their reality. And your vision of their world only gets worse over time. And eventually, you become so blind it’s debilitating. You can’t drive, or read, or walk straight in their world. You become so far removed from reality that you can’t even hear what they say to you.

You become stuck in your world. Only it’s not your world anymore, it’s your mind. And it’s lonely. It’s confusing. It’s devoid of connection and understanding and you’re trapped in it. It’s full of frustration and anger and it drowns out any rational thought you might have. Too much time passes like this.

But then you calm down. You tell yourself “who cares?” Who cares if you can see their world or not. And it’s quiet. And you can hear again. And then you hear people. People like you. Other people who wear glasses. They never have the exact same prescription as you, but they understand. And there are even people who don’t wear glasses. They don’t understand but they want to. They want to look through your lenses and try to make sense of them. To help you. They’re all there for you.

So you come back to reality. You put the glasses back on. You can hear and you can see again. And you don’t quite see it the same as all the others, but that’s okay. You have people around you. People who accept and love you. People living in our world. A world full of connection and understanding. A world you felt you had never seen before. So you keep the glasses on. And it’s peaceful. And I don’t mind the glasses anymore.