(Un)mediated Vision

She hates seeing through her spectacles.

They were fixed annoyingly and obnoxiously in front of her eyes, occasionally gliding down her nose as though they were aware of her dislike of them and were embarrassingly trying to take their leave. But they could not, and she could not put off wearing them at times. Yet, she could not help but feel immensely aware of the weight of them on her nose, the feeling of them blocking her real eyes from seeing.

It wasn't for beauty or vanity that she hated wearing them. But these lenses instead of helping her, hindered her; instead of clearing her vision, obscured it. She hated the sense that they were trying to dictate to her what to see. They say to her 'look there, there's a tree', or 'over there, there is a house'. Her freedom was confined by the frames of the glasses sitting quietly upon her features, her experience of life constrained as though she were only seeing things vicariously through the transparent lenses of her spectacles.

It was like trying to touch with gloves on, it was like trying to hear music through earmuffs. They were an additional layer her senses had to penetrate in order to grasp the stimuli, the things that moved her spirits. And they just felt unnatural, no matter how necessary they are.

No, if she were to see, to truly see, it would be through her real eyes. The blurred images of the distant backdrop, the fuzziness of letters on a signboard - they were flawed, imperfect, broken, but they were rightfully hers. It was her eyes touching these sights, caressing them, feeling their weightiness and committing them to memory and mind.