I was a lanky, awkward, bony spider of a child. I hated the way I looked. Between my hair always cut short to my earlobes and always missing a tooth, it was pretty terrible.  I wanted to be different. Not different from everyone else. Just different. Different from who I was.

When I was about 8, I got my first pair of glasses. Relentless positive and negative comments came across for the first week whether I liked it or not. “You look so much older!” or the classic, “Four eyes!” I hated it all. My glasses did provide some comfort, though. I could hide behind them. Nobody could see my eyes or eyebrows in detail. Hiding my tears was much easier now, as well as the worried expressions. The downfall was that the giant black rectangle glasses made me look like a major dork.

When I hit high school, I cut off most of my hair and dyed it purple. Then I dyed it blonde. Then blue. Then pink. I didn’t care what people thought of me anymore. Or at least I thought so. This was a short lived phase. Turns out I just suppressed everything inside of me.

I bought circle glasses online for my 17th birthday, thinking I would be grunge and hipster-ish. Turns out I just looked like an even bigger dork. So I went back to the beginning. Dark, fat, rectangle glasses that cover my eyebrows. I still want to change. I still want to be different. Do I care what people think of me? Yes. But at least I still have my glasses to hide behind. Some things never change.