Day 8 – Glassed

Ughhh..I just typed out half a post and ended up deleting the draft in error. So here I am retyping!

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We are snuggled on the couch watching one of our favorite sitcoms, sharing some Tiramisu. It is the end of the day and I am relaxing with my head on the Husbadoo’s shoulder. He turns his head and leans in for a kiss and I pause for a minute to remove my glasses first! Every single time ! The Husbadoo just sighs. He knows that arguing with me about my glasses will just kill the mood.  You would think that in ten years of being together, I would feel more comfortable about my glasses. But I am not. In my head, my mental image of me in glasses is so appalling that I am sometimes surprised the husbadoo choose me.

It all started in class 8.I was one of the two kids in class who clearly needed a follow up after failing the the mandatory eye test they did. The other was my friend, another girl, S. Funnily enough we were the nerdiest two girls in the class even without glasses.

S got her glasses first. She came in sporting them on the school bus one day . I on the other hand, broke down at the ophthalmologist’s office and then had another breakdown at the optician’s shop when I had to choose my glasses. I then had another good cry, hugging my parents, the day I actually received my glasses. It should have come as no surprise that I needed glasses in the first place. Both my parents are near sighted. It is in fact, maybe surprising that I had managed without them so far. I remember particularly hating Maths in 6^th standard as I couldn’t see the numbers very well from the last row. I had somehow managed to sit in the front few benches after that year.

Anyway, I did not wear the glasses to school the next day but instead tried to open up my case as unobtrusively as possible and put them on only after class had begun. That was year, we were seated next to boys, and my bench partner a silly little ragamuffin of a boy of course noticed and laughed and called me “chasmish” and other such horrific names. Soon all the other boys in the class laughed and teased me and even our class teacher, Ms. R had to stop in the middle of teaching us Chemistry to quieten them down with a bemused look on her face. I was teased mercilessly for the next few days and weeks. A few mean girls played a role too. Irritatingly pretty but bitchy girl R, with her perfect legs, face, body and eyes ( every single boy in our class ,and the other sections too  may I add ,adored her) , begged me during a free period to borrow them and she amused the male folk in the class with some silly overacting. You see, I think I had chosen the fugliest,  granniest looking huge black frames ever. But it was also in the way I wore them, almost apologetically, very consciously. Not like S, who not a single boy or girl had teased a few weeks ago. Teasing me was fun because I was hurt and upset to begin with.

Of course, the teasing ceased but my hatred for my glasses, my eyesight and myself did not. My glasses were my bane all through high school. I wore them as sparingly as possible – to only classes. Not on commute, not for assembly, not for debates and elocutions (till maybe class 10 when I realized I should be atleast be able to see the judges and the audience). Of course, this led to my eyesight getting worse and worse and I gave myself a pretty high myopic number, apart from the astigmatism I already had.

The glasses shook my confidence levels so much at school,  that I probably have to only thank them for not landing a high school boyfriend like my other girl friends. I was shy, reserved, nerdy, all through classes 8 -10. I was the quiet girl who did well in the classes but was usually nestled with a book somewhere during the lunch breaks. I was the girl who all the moms thought was perfectly lovely from the yearly class picture, but who none of the boys cared to take a second look at. The husbadoo refuses to believe I was the repulsive creature I make myself out to be, and assures me that he would have been a silent crusher if he was in my school but I doubt it. I think it is all about self-confidence. Who likes a girl who isn’t self-confident?

It was maybe in class 11 that I slowly stopped bothering about my appearance and that was when I gained some confidence. My mom had promised me lenses as soon as I got to college and my glasses count down begun. I wore my glasses on my commute now and could actually see people from across the road as I waited at the bus stop. I wore my glasses out on the street with abandon. By this time I had gone through several different frames and had found one that vaguely looked decent on me.The first guy who ever asked me out ,(at the grand old age of 16 in class 12) if I remember right, did it when I had my glasses on. So maybe they never meant anything to anybody but me? I don’t know.  Anyway , I still hated my glasses and when we “broke up” a few months later and I saw him with prettier girls, I went into the whole “hate myself” mode again and blamed my glasses and in turn, my looks for everything.

I was perhaps the world’s happiest human being when I got my lenses , finally! A week before college. And then I really became myself. I felt confident about my look. I was fairly popular in college and well liked. (Not saying much for a nerdy government engineering college, but still). I took care to never wear my glasses to college. And even feigned illness when my eyes might have just been too tired or red for lenses. I told the husbadoo I wore glasses and have terrible eyesight may be a day after he asked me out. He didn’t care at all , of course. He asked me to put them on for him a few months into our relationship and said he was always vaguely attracted to women in glasses. I still don’t know if he says this to make me feel better.

You will probably see me with my glasses only if you are a house guest or we travel long distance together or something. However tired my eyes are in the morning, I make sure to put my lenses on before I go and drop Bandar. I might not have any make up on but I will surely be in my lenses. I might be at home , lounging in my glasses , but if you whip out your phone for a picture or a video, my glasses will have to come off.  Recently on my trip to India, I gave the husbadoo a panicked call from the airport saying I could see some old college friends in the waiting lounge and that I looked and felt horrible as I had my glasses on. So the insecurity is very much there.

After wearing lenses for almost 13 years, for several long hours a day I am at a point where my eyes are often red. Every few years, I need to change the brand of lenses I wear. I am too miserly to spend the money on Lasik surgery. Plus I figure I am about 10-15 years away having to wear glasses for long distance vision anyway. The husbadoo tells me to not irritate my eyes and to wear glasses all the time, but even he knows that it will do nothing for my confidence.

I envy women who don their glasses proudly. Women, like my friend S from class 8, who I still see on Facebook happily wearing her glasses to bridal showers and pool parties. Sadly, I am no where as confident as she is. I hope that I start to care less about this as I get older. But for now, I will hurry and put on my lenses every morning.