Going blind

My glasses are as much a part of me as anything I can think of. I have worn them since the fourth grade, switching every two years to a new style and brand. Slowly, they have metamorphosed from a pair of dinky, tortoise-shell circle frames to a sleeker pair of black, rectangular frames by Ferragamo.

Every passing year has meant the continued degeneration of my eyes. When I was younger, my eye troubles were slight and entirely normal, no more bothersome than a quirky personality trait or a particularly unique food preference. But now, my eyes are shot. And though I am not literally going blind, or even capable of being considered legally blind, seeing is hard.

When I’m without my glasses I get extraordinarily anxious. The world I expect becomes something else altogether. I have only lost or broken my glasses on three occasions and each time was absolute hell. Every step I took I had to question. Buildings looked less distinct and more menacing, and every face I saw was featureless with so little personality it was as though I was looking at balls of wax. And so, when I’ve been without my glasses, I’ve had to create the world as I imagine it to be as, in those instances, I’m incapable of seeing it any other way.

I wonder though, if I am the only person ever affected by such vision paralysis. This idea of seeing extends itself beyond the literal and physical, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now. What do you see when you look at someone? What do you think others see when they look at you? I have a deep fear that to others, I am but a blur, a massive blob of nothing more than featureless flesh—because then, I have no control over what they decide to see, or what they imagine me to be.

I have many characteristics and qualities that come with their fair share of assumptions and baggage. Being black and gay, I find that sometimes people stare a little harder. And these are not necessarily stares of anything other than a genuine curiosity or recognition of the fact that I am different from them. Perhaps, if I am being honest, these stares are only significant in terms of the emphasis I place on them, and perhaps it is my own recognition of my “differences” that I see in their eyes.

Either way, I have spent a lifetime developing mechanisms to combat being “blurred” and reconstructed. I have worked at making people laugh harder, at smiling at strangers as I pass them on my way to class. Please do not mistake this for insincerity. When I laugh with you, I mean it, and when I smile, I’m happy to see you. But I am also quite conscious of the fact that I am trying to break through to you, and in doing so, I worry that at times I fulfill the stereotype, or the idea of what others expect me to be.

I imagine that it is quite easy for many of us to “blur” the people in our lives, both close to our hearts and unfamiliar. Because, when it comes down to it, it’s hard to see someone as nothing more than what they are. You see their clothes, their weight, their color, their voice, and with all of these things, you build a man or a woman who may not actually be there. And what’s worrisome then is that you may find yourself alone.

Sometimes, it’s much easier to fall into this type of behavior as it keeps you from seeing things you don’t want to see: people getting thinner, or sadder, or meaner. Instead you choose to see someone healthy, or happy, or popular. And this vicious cycle continues only until it’s stopped. People all around us are trying to break through, to you and me. In doing so, as philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once noted, they enter a battleground for the self, attempting to define and redefine themselves, sometimes getting trapped.