I adapted to life out of focus. My world was an impressionist painting: earthy hues blended the landscape as swaths of grey streaked across the sky. Silhouettes danced in and out, their edges fuzzy. Like an artist, I played with light. With the squint of an eye, I could add shading; in a blink, I could renew the canvas.

I don’t remember when I first experienced a lens. It could have been as I pressed my face to contraptions at the eye doctor’s office or as I browsed the frames at Warby Parker. Yet suddenly, I could view my mother’s bloodshot eyes and swollen nose after twelve hours of wearing an N95. The trickling wet paint of the slurs graffitied in the parking garage. The saltire of the confederate flag paraded through the Capitol Building. Perspiration on the foreheads of anxious grocery shoppers as they scoured the empty shelves. The white knuckles of protesters gripping their rifles as they rallied on the Statehouse lawn. Clouds of tear gas rising among the hollers downtown.

The world was hurting, and my impressionist period was over. Only then did I develop a newfound appreciation for what it means to see. Both literally and figuratively, my reality is no longer as blurred as it once was.