26 Years Online
••• The International Writers Magazine - Lifestyles & Culture

Through a Pair of Cheap Sunglasses • Matt Stewart Around 10% of the people in the world have blue eyes. It’s the second-most common color in the world, with brown eyes taking up the lion’s share at about 80%. It’s still a popular color, though, especially in men. And my wife certainly loves my blue eyes: she’s always said it was one of the first things that attracted her.             Me? I hate them.

What people don’t tell you about having blue eyes is that going outside hurts. Driving at night hurts. Even just having the lights on in my living room at night hurts. Fluorescent lights? Migraine inducers. LEDs? Stabbing spears of pain into my brain. And the sun? My eyes’ mortal enemy; even on cloudy days, or in the wee hours of the morning just before sunrise, I must take care to shield my eyes from my foe lest it render me helpless on the couch with a massive headache. In the classroom, I’m always wearing a ball cap to minimize the amount of little stinging devils of light piercing my eyes, to the point where I’ve had classmates express surprise at seeing my bare head on the one or two occasions I’ve felt daring enough to go without. And, of course, I sleep with a pillow over my head to thwart as much of the morning sun as I can – I’ve yet to find a sleeping mask that works well enough – and I find it incredibly hard to sleep more than a few hours past sunrise without waking to my eyes in pain and my head in a vise.
           
Thus, I can’t really exist outside without a pair of sunglasses on. Even if the light doesn’t blind me, it’s inevitable a migraine is coming soon. But I need them dark – so dark it turns daytime into a moonless night – and they must be wrap-arounds; any sliver of light coming near my eyes renders the whole exercise moot, so my sunglasses must be the Great Wall that protects my China from the Sun invaders.

This doesn’t leave too many options when I go looking for a new pair, and to get what I need, it can be devastating to my wallet. Expensive sunglasses, however, don’t seem to like me much. My first pair I accidentally sat on and snapped the frames a few weeks after buying them. A second pair broke in my cargo jeans pocket in some mysterious fashion I still haven’t solved 20 years later.

My last pair? A nice set of Costas, probably about $150 – more than I’d ever spent on sunglasses before. And they were beautiful: designed for outdoor wear so they were dark, but not in a way that drowned the world in murky shadows like the cheap pairs. I could be outside without any pain, still seeing vibrant colors; the joys of HD lenses. I loved them dearly, and not just for the monetary investment they were: they were perfect and everything I needed.

I had them three weeks before I lost them. I was getting ready for a 10k race later in the morning, and I had my Costas on top of my head since it was still before dawn. I jogged out to my car and drove to the race site, only once I got there they were gone. Even after I drove back and scoured the route from my parking spot to my barracks room three or four times, I couldn’t find them. They would have been there less than an hour, in the pre-dawn of a Saturday morning, but still, they were gone.

Now I just stick to cheap pairs. It seems no matter how determined I am to forget them somewhere, I’ll always find them. I’ve left them behind in stores, restaurants, in public places…and whenever I come back, there they are. My current pair sits on my face with almost entirely missing nose pieces and a few chips in the lenses from being dropped, but they have been my steady companions for almost ten years now. They are certainly on their last legs, though I just can’t seem to lose them yet. I’ll probably cry when they do finally break; they’ve been loyal guardians worthy of my sorrow.

But they’re not like those Costas. They’re dark, but the world isn’t vibrant. The world I see when I step outside is dull and hushed and muted, a washed-out, depressed, lonely version of the real world. Bright, blue skies are troubled seas amidst a terrible storm.

This version of the world is safe for my eyes, and I don’t begrudge my sunglasses for that. But for that protection I’ve had to trade what makes the outside world alive. I’ve had to learn to love the darkened skies of a coming rainstorm over a clear summer day. I’ve had to mentally adjust the colors of the flowers and trees I see as I drive by to offset the unnatural shading.

I don’t know what it’s like to be outside with the sun shining, perceiving nature in all its magnificence. The closest I get are pictures and videos, as my eyes only see an obscured version outside. My view of the world is very different from others. They get to see it as it truly is.
I only see the world through a pair of cheap sunglasses.
           
© Matt Stewart 3.1.25
Senior, Computer Science(Creative Writing/Japanese Minor)
College of Charleston

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