I picked up new glasses today. My vision is significantly worse, but that’s to be expected; due to medical abuse I was unable to regularly see either the ophthalmologist or the optometrist to keep track of these things. As a result, the glasses I just retired are from 2019. Not only that, I was only able to afford them because a friend gave me money to buy them from Zenni. That friend died in 2020, before my glasses arrived so I could show her.
As a result the last ones are sentimental. Sure, the white swirls on the arms have long since worn off, and one lens is only in the frame because of superglue I’ve been regularly applying to keep the frame together, but it’s still a sort of goodbye. The years I wore those glasses for were marked by so many things; deaths, homelessness, an abrupt end to an abusive marriage and the fallout that’s continuing, there’s been a lot. And the way I’m wired, little changes, like new glasses, can trigger big feelings.
But there’s another aspect to this all, they’re bifocals now. I feel like I’ve unlocked a rare achievement because I never expected to make it this far. I’m still surprised I made it to adulthood, and honestly adulthood hasn’t proven to be any better. So things like gray hairs, and new wrinkles, and now needing bifocals are big things, because up until I left my ex husband I didn’t think I’d make it this far to experience aging. As it is, I lost 20 years to him, but I try to not think of it as a loss. I did get my kid out of the deal, after all, and just thinking about her reminds me that it’s been worth if.
And yet, that leaves me with these glasses. Glasses that aren’t worth keeping as a backup because my vision is only 20/70 in them, not enough to pass the vision test at the DMV. Glasses weighed down by a history that feels massive and all consuming. Glasses that are only held together at this point by superglue and spite. I can’t just throw them away.
But it’s also not the only strangely sentimental thing I’ve held onto like this before. Broken, unusable, someone else’s garbage. But I’m not throwing them out. Not yet. I’ll tuck them away, somewhere I’ll likely forget about them until I stumble across them again. And then future me, more healed and more stable, can weigh that history in his hands and decide if it’s time to throw them away or not. Because this isn’t something I have to do today.
Leave a Reply