never make passes

[freckles_and_doubt]

Yesterday, as I wandered vaguely around the faculty office, a colleague bumped into me, did a double take, and said, "I like your glasses ... Um, have you always worn glasses?" This was a little disconcerting. I have incredibly bad eyesight (-8.5 in one eye, -3.5 in the other) and gave up on contact lenses about a decade ago, as they actively irritate my eyes (Apparently I have little bumps on the inside of my eyelid. Go figure.) As a result I have worn glasses continuously for as long as she's known me, which is for over two years now, during which time she's occupied the office next to mine. They've simply never registered.

What she's responding to is my new glasses, which I wore for the first time yesterday. I've hitherto gone for fairly minimal sort of frames which more or less disappear on my face - thin metal rims, small lenses. I can't do that any more, because the prescription is strong enough and the resulting lenses thick enough that they can't go into narrow-rimmed frames, and I no longer have the disposable income necessary to pay the R6000-odd additional cost for having the lenses thinned. It's hipster thick frames, or nothing. We managed, by dint of trying on half the frames in the shop and several the nice man dug out from the back room, to make the lenses a bit larger by using a cats-eye shape, which cuts out the really thick outer bit, and which I incidentally like rather a lot.

This was also, however, a philosophical decision for which I probably blame several years of intensive therapy. I've always minimised my glasses before, because they make me feel frumpy and unattractive. But hipster frames are very in at the moment, they're all over the media and it's rubbed my nose in the fact that they actually work. They make a statement - yes, these are glasses, aren't they cool? as opposed to please-pretend-I'm-not-wearing-them. I wandered into the optician determined to go for larger glasses with thicker frames and damn the torpedoes, and so I have. This augurs a certain degree of increased self-confidence from two years ago, when I ordered the last pair, and I am modestly proud of this. So, presumably, is my therapist.

I would post a selfie, but really.

Comments

Pics!

[robynn (from livejournal.com)]

I do of course sympathise with the anti-selfie sentiment but am still dying to see the glasses. If you can't be persuaded to Show them properly, mebbe just a peek at the specs themselves?

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

Husband and I both wear specs, we're myopic. The difficulties arise when we've taken off said specs for close work - always have read/used the computer sans specs - and forget where we've put them. We have difficulty seeing clearly far enough to find them. D'you find that? Or are you fiendishly organised about where you put your specs when you take them off?

Time was, when the children lived at home, we could ask them to go on a 'glasses hunt'. I now try to keep my specs in the same place all the time, along with a second pair, so that if I lose one pair . . . If H mislays his, I then have some and so can go on a 'glasses hunt' for him!

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

That very idea is foreign to me. My eyes are -7.5 (left) and -9.0 (right). My glasses go on before I stand up in the morning and only get taken off as I nod off to sleep at night. They are never anywhere other than on my face or on the bedside table. If the cats knock them off the bedside table, though, there is a serious problem.

I do tend to wander around a bit lost after a shower, though, if I've put them down 5cm from their normal spot.

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

I had corrective surgery to fix my -8 and -8.5 which, to the credit of the surgeon, lasted for about the 10 years he guaranteed…now either due to time or the fact I spend most of my days using a screen they have begin to decline again…bah, humbug. I'm obsessive about wearing dark glasses due to my mum's eye cancer, but thats about as much "stuff on my face" I can tolerate…so contact lenses for me…what has been fascinating is that its taken 2 years and 8 different brands to find some I can wear that are not akin to tripping balls while peering through the bathroom window in the rain (mostly clearly)! I have scaring across my cornea that means I have at least 3 distinct perscriptions at various points in each eye…which do super interesting things when covered with soft contact lenses. There are times I wish I had the panache and will power to carry off a pair of hipster glasses…you're winning at enviable librarian-chic!