Born wonky eyed

Natural selection and crossed eyes

I can’t go my whole life without commenting on this: I was born cross-eyed.

When I was a little kid I had experimental corrective surgery. Growing up I looked pretty normal. It wasn’t until middle age that I had more of a lazy eye again.

While cosmetic surgery is an option, one opthamologist told me that there were no guarantees that I would not end up with double vision. Oh, joy. Ultimately I decided I’d rather live with wonky eyes than double vision.

Despite what you might think, this hasn’t really been a devastating situation. First off, no matter what it may look like to you, I barely notice it when I am inside looking out. To me whatever is going on in my vision is normal for me. The  only time I notice it is when I look in the mirror. That’s when I scream!

There are even some benefits to this condition. Over the years my eyes decided to specialize. One of them sees better far and the other sees better near. So instead of wearing bifocals, my eyes do the work automatically. My opthamologist called me a natural alternator. That’s pretty cool.

Being cross-eyed is not a birth defect covered in political correctness manners. It seems to be fair game for bad humor in the movies and on TV. No group stands up and protests on behalf of those of us born with wonky eyes.

It really doesn’t bother me that much, though. The funniest cross-eyed joke I have heard was about the woman with a lazy-eyed boyfriend. “He said he only had eyes for me, but he was seeing another girl on the side.”

If I ever suffered any traumatic rejection over the state of my eyes, I don’t really know about it. While it’s open season on making fun of people with lazy eyes, it’s not cool to tell someone, “I’m rejecting you because I can’t get my head around having a friend/lover with a lazy eye. It creeps me out to look at you.” Supposed friends do fade out of my life without explanation or even a farewell email, and I always wonder why. I especially wonder what goes on unspoken behind the scenes.

Yet I also know that we live in a culture where telling the whole truth is not a cherished practice. I am guilty of fashioning cover stories myself. As much as I idealize the depths of honesty and intimacy, I’ve also got heavy training in “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

When you have what you believe to be a physical defect, the biggest obstacle is projection. I imagine what’s going on inside other people’s minds when they look at me. And all that is my consciousness. I get nervous about the stress they are feeling having to deal with my asymmetrical eyes. In other words, my nervousness stems from my own fantasies.

I deal with the other side of this when I see people who have other birth defects, diseases, or injuries. I fully know that I am slightly afraid of them because I am projecting how I would deal with whatever it is they’re dealing with. With deliberate effort I can intervene on my runaway thoughts and remind myself that their reality is different from my fantasies.

I am most reminded of my birth defect in situations where cosmetically beautiful faces are required … such as appearing on video. I would not look cool on TV. On video you’re supposed to look directly into the camera with your wonderfully aligned eyes and create a sense of (or an illusion of) intimacy with the viewer. Well, shucks. Ain’t gonna happen here.

I’ve accepted that I’m not going to get any modeling contracts from GQ this life.

So what does this all mean to you? Chances are that you’ve got something about you that you aren’t thrilled about. Too fat, too thin, too hairy, too bald, too short, too tall, not enough of this, too much of that. Something keeps you from feeling great about yourself.

Everybody’s got something. So just let it go. Just let it go.

I know, I know. So easy to say. But no one else can save you from your own thinking but you.

It’s going to do you no good to sweat your self-declared flaws and everybody’s got something. Focus instead on all the positive qualities you bring with you.

I like to look at it from a spiritual perspective. I have come to believe, as many do, that as pre-incarnated souls we choose many of the conditions of our births including our parents, our physical problems and predispositions, and even some of the defining events of our lives. It isn’t necessary to totally buy into this, but it’s useful to ask, “If through some cosmic design I chose this, what am I learning from it?” (In my case it’s probably along the lines of beauty is more than physical, but it’s a big one to process.)

Another thing I’ve learned in life is that when you moan and groan about whatever it is about yourself that you hate, someone will point out someone else who’s worse off. When I started moaning about being born with wonky eyes, someone cited the motivational speaker Nick Vujicic born without arms or legs. Yeah, okay.

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