Time for the responsible adult thing. I put off getting new glasses as long as possible, because damn those prescription glasses are expensive. It occurred to me that I’ve been using the same lenses for about 9 years now. The same lenses which I have known for most of that time to have a flaw directly in front of my right pupil (I should have had them remake it when I noticed it, but 9 years ago my social anxiety was much worse).
Eye doctors advise that you keep your old glasses around as a backup in case your current pair breaks or gets lost. That way you can find your way to the office to get them replaced. Well, my last pair had about 8 years on them before I got my current ones. The plastic was missing from the earpieces on both sides, and now the lenses have turned yellow with age. Those won’t help much at all. When I was cleaning my current pair last week, the nose pad came apart. It was too late at night to go get spare parts, so I just glued it back on and said, “Okay, it’s time. Make an appointment.”
Glasses become part of your identity. When you change your frames, you change your whole face. I like glasses now, but that wasn’t always the case. I remember my first-grade teacher telling my mom I needed to get my eyes checked because I didn’t seem to be paying attention. Turns out I didn’t need glasses back then, I was just bored. By the time I was twelve, though, I was wearing GIANT frames.

Seriously?! Did my cheeks need to see, too? The headgear wasn’t bad enough on its own?

I choose some smaller, oval frames in high school. I thought they were pretty cool, but it turns out oval frames brought the wrong kind of attention to my eyebrows. The distance between the frame and the outer end of my eyebrow made it look like I was constantly annoyed. Anytime my friends would introduce me to people, they would ask my friends, “Why doesn’t she like me? She always looks like she’s going to beat me up or something.” Yeah, I had a chronic case of Resting Bitchface Syndrome, and my choice in glasses, albeit based in a love for hippie style, just didn’t help.

When I decided to try again at college, my mom took me to get new glasses for the new chapter in my life. I chose something more modern: rectangle frames with invisible bottom and tribal cutouts on the earpieces. I loved these frames and got so many compliments. They have a big drawback, I found out later, due to the invisible bottom half. If you pop a lens out, good luck getting it back in. The lens is held in place by essentially a piece of fishing line, and as you’re trying to align the top part of the lens with the metal side of the frame, you notice that getting the line back around the other side is going to mean stretching it over some sharp corners. That’s stressful.

So it’s time to find new frames for my new face. I’d like something with a bolder outline, more upward angle at the outside, nothing super colorful (because it’s going to have to match everything I wear for a very long time), and it needs movable nose pads to accommodate my crooked nose. Let the frames shopping begin!