I’m using my recent eye glasses purchase situation as a metaphor for how this belief lives in me and is expressed through my experiences. **Special note: my example is what may be considered a “quality” problem. Again, it is a metaphor for how I internally experience some situations and not me talking about a “Rachel, your life is in danger” circumstance. However, if you can relate and are aware of terms like Complex Trauma, then you understand how “I’m just trying to buy new frames” involves more processing and now serves as a great metaphor.

Around Christmas, I was due for a regular eye doctor appointment. Though I had a newer pair of glasses (as of summer), I was beginning to experience some vision loss, super blurry vision, in my left eye. I was beginning to get nervous AND began thinking that my prescription from just that summer was no good. Without getting into it too much, I needed a new prescription and was encouraged by my eye doctor to get progressive lenses. 

Because of the nature of progressive lenses—the ones with all three distance values in them: near, medium and far—I was told that oversized frames don’t work because the reading (near) part of the lens will be too far down on your face. That meant that I couldn’t use my larger framed, less than 7 months old glasses, for this new prescription. Well, shit. Because the vision loss was scaring me, it felt like a priority to pick out new, smaller frames to go with my new prescription (now trifocal, progressive lenses). 

The newer lenses were more expensive, too. I got a package that included a small selection of frames but all of this was still around $500. And I had JUST bought new glasses that summer. UGH. I picked out the best pair I could from the small selection feeling the pressure for these new lenses, better prescription, correcting my now worse vision, etc.

But I didn’t LOVE the new frames. Some of my friends liked them on me. They were clear frames with a pink/peach tint. The color was fine by me. The style of the frames was “meh.” All the style of my oversized, dark frames (that I liked) was absent and I was left feeling that middle-age (which I am) sensibility (not my style)—you know, my mom’s version of style—live on my aging face, surrounded by my lack-luster, dry, thin hair.

I felt BORING.

I tried to like them.

The other problem was that after they first made those newer glasses, the prescription was off for the left eye. I had had an eye infection when I first went to have my eyes checked. My new lenses were made to correct my bad vision which turns out was solely from the eye infection. So, now those new frames, the ones that were “meh” to me to begin with, needed to be remade…with my original prescription! I never needed new glasses.

But. They were paid for. So why not have two pairs of glasses to choose from? Why not? And I could have one pair with the progressive lenses in them (including the other middle-age quality, transition lenses!, that turn into sunglasses in sunlight). Sigh.

I wasn’t thrilled, but I tried to go with it. They got remade with my original prescription plus progressive + transition lenses. And I wore them. I enjoyed the progressive aspect somewhat, but I still felt boring in them. I felt dull, like my hair. I felt aged and uninteresting.

One day I was cleaning them and noticed that the left lens was loose. Then I noticed why. The frame had cracked right under the left lens.

They got remade. Repaired. New glasses that I never really liked and never needed, Rachel-effort-try-#2.

A month or two goes by and Bunny and I are watching TV. I adjust my glasses on my face and notice…

The frame was broken. AGAIN.

I called and told the eye glasses technician, Well, guess what? You won’t believe it.

They replaced them AGAIN. #3

I was not loving them any more than the first day I tried them on. I felt pressure to make them work because: I had spent money on them; they were okay looking; I could see out of them.

But guess what? The frames cracked in the same area on the frame, AGAIN. And the eye place wanted to remake them. AGAIN. I felt like I was supposed to just go with it. However, when I called to let them know of the broken frames, I asked if the woman who had originally helped me the last three times would call me back first.

I had decided that I wanted options. I was done with those frames. I was tired of driving up to Asheville (1 hour both ways) to have those frames that I never really liked, remade. I didn’t feel great about having that conversation, because I felt a bit of shame for agreeing to buy them in the first place and then not saying anything the first time they broke, or the second or third time. 

Instead of calling me back first, the woman put the order in to have them remade, this time from scratch. New lenses, etc. And she left me a message telling me that they were in progress, as if everything was a-okay. 

So, not only did I need to (for myself) talk to her about other options, I needed to do it after I knew the remake was already in progress! This may not be difficult to navigate for some of you reading this, but for me, this felt extremely difficult.

I called back and said I wanted to talk about different options. I gave her a list of three alternatives, as opposed to having those same frames remade. I reiterated that we had been through them breaking multiple times, and I was so over those frames that I would forego picking them up even if they got made again. I would just use the ones from the summer and kiss my $500 buh-bye. (I wasn’t an ass about it, I promise. I was calm and matter-of-fact about it. And I was serious about saying that I was close to giving up on them.) She said she had to talk to the higher ups.

She called me back to relay that they wanted me to try one more time with the remade glasses, that the lenses were already cut and then if something happened, we could talk about the options I suggested: pick out new frames, get a reimbursement, get some sunglasses instead.

Initially, I sighed and said, Yes. Okay.

I felt like, what option did I really have? The lenses were already cut. But I also felt troubled around how I had asked for a call back BEFORE anyone moved forward. I had wanted to talk about the options I was considering first. I was feeling torn between appeasing, not making a fuss, going along with their plan and feeling like it was “too late” with the lenses already in progress while also feeling that I needed to speak up to the fact that I never asked them to remake them this time. Talk about UNCOMFORTABLE. 

I literally had to pray for the courage to call the woman back and say, PAUSE. I need to pause. I understand that the lenses are being made or already are, but I don’t want those frames again. I’m over them. They have been made three times. I need time to decide what I want to do.

I told her would call her in a few days to let her know.

I had to get clear for myself about what I truly wanted (and didn’t). And as difficult as it was for me, I knew that I never liked those frames. I didn’t feel good in them.

I wanted to pick out new frames, and I didn’t want to pay for another pair of frames. I wanted to replace the ones that kept breaking with new frames I truly liked.

However, I couldn’t make the call. I couldn’t. So, I asked my HP for help. (You can do that, you know. In any situation, big or small.) The reason I asked for help is that the situation wasn’t the whole experience. It wasn’t all about the frames, getting new glasses. What it was about for me was: what do I really want and how can I voice that in order to not try and make what I don’t really want “okay” with me.

There are circumstances where acceptance is the answer, and I have to find a way to accept what is in those circumstances. That is where radical acceptance is important and actually allows me to make healthy decisions for myself, such as detaching from unhealthy/harmful situations. But this eye glasses story is not that.

The woman I had been working with ended up calling me at the end of the week to ask what I wanted to do, and I was able to say (miracles, anyone?) that I wanted to pick out new frames AND I did not want to pay for them.

She said, Okay.

Wow and yay.

Guess what, Y’all? When I went in for my appointment, we talked about my style a little more, and she picked out a much more fun selection of frames for me to try. And when I found the right pair, I lit up like an orb in the sky. I was SO relieved because I knew I liked them. I KNEW I felt good in them. I knew they were way more ME.

Do you know what else I knew? I knew that: I know what I want and what I don’t want. I know it. And it is there for me to trust rather than to try and make good in my mind what I “should be okay with.” Or to deny what it is I want because:

What I want is too expensive, is asking too much from someone else, they’ll never want to do that, your wants come from your ego, have some humility, material desires are shallow, acceptance is the spiritual way, you’re fine with whatever, it’s too much effort to ask for what you really want or to spend more time on how to get there…

This list can go on and on and on and on.

Remember way back when I said that my belief, “I cannot have or even want what I really want,” comes from old wiring? Yep. My nervous system is set up for appeasing, pleasing, tolerating and/or accepting the unacceptable. I needed to make many situations OK for the first half of my life. And then I got into recovery, and the message there is “acceptance is the answer to all my problems”. For a long time appeasing others and acceptance were so woven together, there was no room for me to allow what I really wanted.

What I find so incredible about this story with my frames, the ones I didn’t really like, was that they kept breaking! I never dropped them, nor stepped on them, nor was rough with them. I simply wore them and didn’t really like them. The symbolism of that is that the underlying issue for me was also breaking. The pressure I have felt to say yes to what is not great for me and to then try and make it “good enough”, to reason it out, overrides this phenomenally intuitive sense that I have for what IS great for me. My wants are part of my inner guidance system. They help me navigate what is right for me.

What a breaking of the frame for me. What a reframe. What a how-to frame FOR ME!

Break those frames, Y’all!

You. Are. Worth. It.

Rachel Margaret Drews

Copyright by Rachel Drews, 2023. All rights reserved. Any excerpts reproduced from this article should include links to the original.