as small as a world and as large as alone

3:54am April 19, 2015

natalunasans:

livesinyesterday:

Alright, normally I’d be way too shy to join in any things like this, but I’ve now had several friends suggest I join in NoShameDay.

I was born with only one eye, an underdeveloped side of my face (which has been adjusted now with surgery to help me chew), problems with my spine, extra ribs, and a smaller ear canal on my left that limits hearing in that ear. The only one of these that is really visible is my artificial eye.

When I was very little I was ashamed. Kids can be cruel, and I don’t know how many times I heard things like “Whats wrong with your face?” Because my face was developing, the eye often wasn’t the right size to be identical to the right. The eye doesn’t move from side to side like my real one either. And when I was small I’d get upset over photos when my eyes were not looking in the same direction in a picture. But over the years the shame over my face has ebbed away and I now am intensely proud of my eye. It is a work of art. It takes three days to make it, to mold it, to paint it, to match it to my right eye. And since eyes are constantly changing colors, my artificial eye must constantly be repainted on a regular basis. It is an art piece that lives as I live. Not to mention I love a good fake-eye related prank or joke. I love making cheesy “I’ve got my eye on you” jokes. Once when I had to leave my fake eye out due to an infection, I was waiting in a line for popcorn at a theater and overheard a man talking to his girlfriend about me quite rudely. Making loud remarks about how he wondered what had happened to my face. So I took my popcorn, put on my best grave expression, and muttered, “Don’t drink and drive,” to him as I passed. 

However, despite now being entirely confident about the fact that one of my eyes is fake, its not always that easy or simple. In recent years people very close to me have fought me over my unwillingness to hide the fact. My parents in particular. My senior year of college I was in a photography course and we had an assignment to make a series of self portraits with a theme. I decided to do a series of photos of myself without my eye. One photo in particular received a lot of praise from my classmates, and moreso I loved it. It was a photo that I finally saw myself in, the way I feel, the way I think of myself. I therefore made this photo my FB profile photo. Within an hour I received an email from my mother begging me to take the photo down, insisting that it was thoughtless to put such images out there. She went on to say that I’ll scare people and what if someone professional came across such a picture of me? I immediately broke into tears. I was shocked that of all people, it was my own mother who would say this. And there have been more confrontations such as this with her and my dad since then. One of the most recent was when I once again had to leave my eye out to let the socket heal from an infection, as per doctor instruction. I don’t like wearing eye patches because they push the lashes inward into the empty eye socket, and rub against my glasses. My mother begged me time and again to use the patch at least when we were in public. I said no. She then begged me to wear sunglasses when leaving the house even though it was winter and the sky was grey. I said no. I was fine as is. She then began calling anyone i was supposed to meet (be it family friend or dentist/doctor/etc) ahead of time to warn them of what they were going to see because I wouldn’t put my eye in. A week later, when my mother had left for a trip, my father sat me down and told me to think of how inconsiderate and selfish I was being. How I upset my mother to see me this way and how I should wear my eye (even though the doctor told me to leave it out for three weeks) to keep her happy. 

That wasn’t the end of such conversations, but on a day to day basis I couldn’t care less. This is my face. It is how i was born. Not some gruesome reminder of an accident or sad event. It is just me. And I love both my eyes. 

i love your sense of humor AND your sense of reality.

1,446 notes