Seeing the world in soft-focus

Recently I've been thinking about getting contact lenses.  Shameful as it is to admit, the reason is for pure vanity's sake.  I've worn glasses since I was fourteen, but (and this is important) sporadically - when I've felt like it.  I never really felt as though I needed them.  But a recent trip to the opticians confirmed that I am at the age and stage when I should be wearing them all the time.  A "non-beglassed" version of me should no longer exist (except for sleeping, of course.  I'm not mad).

When I got my first pair of glasses, the optician told me I was "long-sighted".  I was secretly pleased at the time.  Short-sightedness was redolent of old ladies with pairs of gold-rimmed lorgnettes dangling from their necks, who'd squint disarmingly at you as you spoke to them.  Long-sightedness, whereby you can see things in the distance better than you can up-close, felt like a sort of super-power!  Plus, at the time I felt my glasses might be good props to hide behind.  But not all the time.  It was interesting and handy to change between "glasses me" and "non-glasses me" whenever I felt like it.

Over the years, being long-sighted has cast a general haze of soft-focus over the world for me, which has been quite useful when I don't actually want to see things too clearly.  My own face in the mirror, for example.  And I know all this will work perfectly well with contact lenses as well as glasses.  I just suppose that now I really have to choose between a permanent "glasses me" and a "non-glasses me" then vanity will win out (as it tends to do) and I'll choose the latter.

I'll miss "glasses me" though.  It'll be strange, reading and writing without them, plus I was looking forward to perfecting my disapproving "over the top of the glasses" stare at people; something I've tried but generally just get laughed at.  That's how I know I'm not really old yet...once people start taking those stares of mine seriously then I'll really know I've turned into a crinkly old harridan.

So I guess in conclusion, glasses are more interesting than contact lenses.  But I'd have a bit of a job stylishly accessorising them with glittery Christmas party dresses, for example, and therefore they'll probably have to go.  How very disappointing.