I know how you feel

My eye glasses prescription is grossly near-sighted. Since Grade 1, without glasses I might as well be blind. I remember trying to watch Star Wars: Return of the Jedi when I had recently broken my glasses. My friend had to read me the subtitles of what Jabba the Hutt was saying because I couldn't read them on the screen.

The same thing happens when I get my haircut. The glasses get in the way of the haircutting, so they're usually laying on shelf nearby. Meanwhile, I can't see a thing. I can't see the expression on people's faces, I can't tell how the haircut is going; I enter this serene lost world until the haircut is over. I sometimes even lose awareness that just because I can't see everyone else, doesn't mean they can't still see me with regular clarity! The best is when the barber asks me to assess my haircut without my glasses on.

A similar occurrence takes place when I need to pick out new frames. I have no perception of how the frames look because I can't see without having the mirror within inches of my face. That view is more conducive to assessing the status of my nose pores than it is in assessing how well a particular frame looks on my face. And in an extreme case of customer-service-neglect, every opthamologist I've ever been to has you try out new frames while your eyes are dilating for the inner-eye inspection. That has to be the worst time to be considering a style change when your vision is already limited!

The last time my prescription changed when I went to pick up the new lenses I immediately knew that something was off. My vision with the glasses was warped and very uncomfortable. I instantly informed the salesperson of the problem to which they replied, "Oh, you just have to adjust to your new prescription." Excuse me, I've been adjusting to new prescriptions since I was in Grade 1, I think I know when there's a problem. They still didn't believe me. Ultimately, I was proved correct. Due to a transcribing error, the axis on the left lens was rotated 90 degrees from what it should have been. I've since switched opthamologists.

The commonality among all of these individuals is they can't fully relate to what I'm experiencing. It's impossible for them to do so. They can empathize based on similar experiences they've been through, but they can't fully appreciate what I'm experiencing. Though I've been taught these principles in the classroom and experienced it firsthand, I sometimes struggle to apply that to the rest of life. I will never fully know exactly how you feel.