(17, CA, USA) Carly - Plastic Vision

To wake each morning, unable to discern even my own reflection, is a feeling unlike any other. A film of distortion rests over my eyes, blending together the pearlescent white of the walls with the tan of the carpet, every essence of vibrance and color fading into indistinguishable figures. It’s as if a toddler has smudged her finger along paint that has yet to dry, defying definite lines and hues to create an abstract, unidentifiable portrait. Each and every morning develops into a mutilated, disfigured landscape, a mural in which the sky and the earth melt into one another until they no longer appear to be separate entities. This cycle of warping confusion lies in submission to the lenses of my eyes, to the reality of visual deficiency. It is difficult to convey what it is like to wake up each morning unable to simply visualize my surroundings. Sight is a quality too often taken for granted; the beauty of vision is a treasure, one that not everyone is blessed with. Imagine a life where every smile fades into skin, where each sunset resembles spilled paint, where even the details of your own appearance are shrouded in a dreary unrecognizability. I live in a discontented dependency on fragments of plastic to determine my worldview. Contact lenses, while a blessing in allowing me sight, are a constant reminder that my perception of the world is controlled and limited by my accessibility to pieces of plastic. The dry, strained eyes, the annual prescription amplifications, and the constant expenses tell me that vision is not free. It is accompanied by a never ending fee that most live in a blissful unawareness of. In a world in which I would give anything to have proper eyesight, my perception is confined to plastic vision.