While cleaning out the bathroom closet, I came across a box that I instantly recognized. It held a few pairs of contacts, the last of their kind that I had never gotten to wear once my sight became impaired. They had a long expiration date on them at the time, so I kept them in the hopes that I could some day use them. But their shelf life has run out; the saline solution they were packaged in has dried up and the once round discs are now shrunken and shriveled. I had a moment where I wondered if I could still pop them in without thinking or looking like I used to and had they not been passed their use-by date I may have tried.
It was a strange feeling to hold the familiar box and its contents, which also included a travel kit and plastic contact cases. Putting “my eyes in” every morning for twenty-five years was mindless, as routine as washing my face and brushing my teeth. It is one of so many things that came to an abrupt halt that morning when I woke up to total darkness.
No matter how organized or diligent you are about clutter and cleaning out closets and other storage spaces, the vestiges of your life can still appear and surprise you. When I reached to the back of the shelf and put my hand on the box, I knew immediately what it was just by feel. I dropped it as if it had burned my hand. It hadn’t, of course, but it did shock my head and my heart. It’s still difficult emotionally to remember what once was, let alone be reminded of something so foreign to your life now that you had forgotten it, even though it was something you did every single day. But there is a sense of pride?, relief? that I hadn’t thought about having imperfect sight that could be corrected with glasses and contacts. As each day passed and it grew closer to the month and year stamped on each sleeve, this daily ritual faded further and further away from my new reality. When you live with the relics of a different life inside you, discovering one that isn’t shows real progress. Though never worn, these lenses allowed me to see things clearly one last time.
