Ispent four years of my life looking down. I avoided all attempts at eye contact, allowing myself to be labeled shy or weird because it was more comforting than the truth: I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I had a lazy eye — strabismus. At about age 14, it gradually showed itself, beginning as a drift, but running like hell to the right within a year.

I couldn’t comprehend that the way I knew myself, knew my reflection in the mirror, had changed without any warning. In my mind, I was still that boy with a steady gaze — but facing pictures of myself brought me back to a reality that I resented. My self-conception was incongruous with how I was perceived.

Through this process, I felt that I had lost autonomy over my body. Worse than this dissociation, though, was the realization that I am

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