Looking Through A New Lens—Literally

My first conscious act of the day—after telling my alarm to shut up—is putting on my glasses. I’ve done it every day since I was 16 and learning that I needed glasses to drive, see the chalkboard at school, and see the individual leaves on trees. Thanks, astigmatic nearsightedness.

I’ve been an adult for a while, though, and sometimes I like to shake things up just to see what happens. I like learning new things or getting a different perspective that may help round out my view of the world.

So I decided to try out contacts.

I’ve never tried them before now because I wasn’t interested in putting my fingers in my eyes to stick fancy plastic onto my corneas.

But I realized that I’ve never clearly seen my adult face sans spectacles (in the mirror or in my phone’s front-facing camera) unless I took a glasses-less selfie and looked at it with glasses on. And I realized it had been ages since I was able to see without easily removable eyewear on my head.

So when I went to the optometrist and found out my prescription had changed again, I decided to give them a shot.

And the adventure began.

I quickly realized putting in contacts is harder than I thought it would be, at least at the start. The first time I tried, it took about 45 minutes. It still takes me upwards of 10 or 15 minutes to place them in my eyes without them falling out, turning inside out, or sticking to my finger.

“It just takes practice,” everyone who wears contacts says.

“How much?” I mutter under my breath as my left lens falls into the sink for the third time.

I guess I’ll just have to keep on practicing. For some reason, the difficulty of putting them on hasn’t deterred me from continuing to wear them. Perhaps that’s because I’ve done much more challenging things than this with a much longer period of adjustment.

I loved seeing the reactions people would make when they saw me without glasses for the first time. Some didn’t notice for quite a while. Others noticed immediately and complimented me on the look, at which point I joked, “I’m glad you like my actual face!”

I’m not moving fully to contacts, however. I did order some new glasses as well. But I’m glad I now have the option not to wear glasses if I don’t want to. Maybe I’ll get myself a nice pair of aviators while I’m at it, since for many years, I’ve only been wearing sunglasses that can sit on top of my prescription glasses.

The craziest thing for me about this experience has been realizing whenever I touch my face that I don’t have external eyewear on. I’m so used to taking off my glasses to rub my face or clean them off. I’m so used to pushing them up with a finger whenever they slip down my nose (as I just did while writing this sentence, since I didn’t have time to put in my contacts this morning).

My view of the world through contact lenses may not technically be any different than viewing it through eyeglasses, but it does feel funny to not have corrective scientific equipment sitting on my face.

And yet, I think even the slightest difference in routine due to trying something new can teach me something about other people and the world around me, even if I’m not actually sure what that thing might be yet.