Blinding myself

I’m sitting on a stiff chair, Passenger’s voice as a background sound, trying to come up with an idea of a good introductory phrase. I want to draw the reader’s attention, to write something clever and engaging. It’s beginning to bother me, this pressure, this inconsistency, this being my fourth version of a paragraph. It always bothered me, actually… being insecure. Looking back, I can get a glimpse of a 13-year-old girl with an extremely vulnerable self-image. I had awkward hobbies, felt unappealing, and was very insecure about my image.

I remember myself sitting at the back of the classroom with my friends, hiding our books behind the desk and trying to read while the teacher talked: that was certainly a rush of adrenalin for us. We were all reading the same saga and were eager to come to school and share our opinions about what we had read on Twilight blogs. That was the time when I started to write novels; we all did, and we read each other’s with great enthusiasm. Although enjoying reading and writing wasn’t the only thing that made me a part of the nerd group: I also loved drawing. I had this friend, Coni, who shared my passion, and we would spend an entire ‘break time’ drawing on a special notebook she had. It was full of small drawings, quotes and whatever we wanted to put on it, and everybody could add something if they felt like it. We were very creative, too; we came up with amazing ideas of superheroes and their superpowers, cars, villains and so on; and of course, we drew all of those ideas.

Those hobbies I had were one of the million things that made me feel unappealing. I had a negative view of girls and boys going out together and thinking of nothing else than flirting; on the contrary, I was happy hanging out with my girl friends, gathering together to watch films and laugh ourselves to tears while eating chocolate. My primary school ‘crush’ had always been the same boy and I had tons of journals with his name on every page, but I never felt it like a real thing, because I thought it impossible for me to be with a handsome boy (or to be with a boy at all). So I lived with that certainty: that only beautiful girls and boys could find love; and those in the films, of course.

Why couldn’t I be one of the beautiful girls? That I asked myself my entire tweenhood and adolescence. I had been insecure about my looks since I was younger than 13, but it only appeared to increase within the years. Ever since I’d started to wear glasses, my life had changed. I remember entering school early in the morning without my glasses on (I didn’t like how they looked on me) and not being able to see a thing. Since I couldn’t find my friends on the playground, I would play dumb and head for the bathroom to stay there, safe, until the bell rang. There was no way I’d let them notice I couldn’t see without my glasses on. My friends would say ‘Hey, why didn’t you come with us? We were right there by the table’ and I would mildly answer ‘I just had to use the bathroom!’

That situation went on for a long time, and I eventually started using my glasses a bit more, although not as much as I needed to. I was completely used to guess the number of a bus by its colour, and to copy the homework from a classmate’s folder instead of from the blackboard. Sometimes I didn’t put them on to watch a film and I just tried to guess what the subtitles said. I had got used to being unable to see, because I was afraid of what others would think if I wore glasses.
Luckily I’m not that kind of person anymore and I can wear glasses and feel comfortable at the same time, although I still prefer contact lens. I look back and I would like to tell that girl to chill, to be herself and not to care so much about other people’s opinions. I lived my preadolescence hiding behind books and drawings, thinking about platonic love as the only possibility for me, and disguising the fact that I couldn’t see well, and it was exhausting. It is for that reason that I try to be more confident with every step I take.