I HAVE A GLASSES TRAUMA

Now that I've come out of the closet as a makeup nerd, I immediately throw in my second confession: I actually have glasses. With extremely thick lenses. I have -don't be shocked- minus eight and those who are also nearsighted know that this is really bizarrely bad. If you don't have glasses, imagine that everything around you is very blurry and you can't see further than twenty centimeters. By the way, everything within that twenty centimeters is very sharp. Quite handy if you want to be sure in the evening that you're in bed with the right man.

I never wear my glasses in public. That's because in the first week that I ever wore my glasses (I was twelve), I was on the bus from the horror neighborhood Aldlân-West (now you understand why I became a thriller writer) to Leeuwarden-Centrum. In that bus were a few very annoying boys who started hitting my head and called me ‘glasses Jew’. Eventually, the bus driver intervened and I was able to escape. Since then, I've made the connection: glasses = vulnerable. Glasses = ugly. Glasses = run for your life.

I never put those glasses on in public again and immediately got contact lenses (luckily my parents allowed me that, but I should also mention that I can cry very convincingly). And still, the moments when you will see me with glasses are very rare. I only wear my glasses at home for a quarter of an hour before going to sleep and a quarter of an hour after getting up, and on the plane, because contact lenses dry out my eyes too much and I don't want to walk around like The Vampire Diaries for three days.

This week is very strange for me. I have to wear my glasses all week because I finally made the decision to have my eyes lasered. And then your eyes need to ‘recover’ from wearing contact lenses. The reason I haven't had my eyes done earlier is also because of this: I don't want to wear my glasses. In the past, you weren't allowed to wear your lenses for a month before the procedure. Now that it's a week, I finally dare to go for it.

So I've already gone out to eat with my glasses on (weird), I bike through the city with my glasses on, and today I'm sitting with my glasses on at Amayzine. And later I even have a meeting with a television producer about a program I might participate in. Also with those glasses on. So far, no one has called me names or hit me on the head, but I would still prefer to hide. I'm totally out of my comfort zone. Although yesterday there was a man (also wearing glasses) who winked at me. I almost fell off my chair.

Next Monday it's over. Then I will see sharply for the first time in thirty years. Then I will never have to feel around for my glasses, take contact lenses in and out of my eyes (I can do it without a mirror in thirty seconds), count the days of trips to take the right number of lenses with me, order lenses on time, and so on. I've always found those lenses very handy, but it seems that once your eyes have been lasered, you really wonder why you didn't do it in God's name earlier. I'm very curious.

Wish me luck, Monday. Because it seems quite strange to see smoke coming out of your eyes (that's how it seems, aaaarrrgggh). And if you see a very skittish little woman with a big pair of glasses biking through the city before that time, that's me.