Alison Sudol

Alison Sudol Instagram – These are my eyes. They are not the eyes I have known most of my life. At times they look like a stranger’s eyes. I have not recognized the person in the mirror. I have not wanted to show my face. I have thyroid eye disease and I have been hiding it. I have only seen one other person with it and she was in the waiting room at the eye hospital. I saw in her a strange, painful mirror- her eyes bulging, the unnerving, startled sadness in her resting expression. It has uprooted her confidence, just as it uprooted mine. I’ve been afraid I wouldn’t work if I admitted it, afraid it will affirm that I look different where one might not have been able to put their finger on it before. In an industry that likes to tear people’s appearance apart, I feared the looks, the disappointment, the tossing into the has been pile that people do so casually, nevermind the cost. I wear glasses, I don’t wear eye makeup. I pick my angles. I avoid pictures. But I have been forced to really take a long deep hard look at the way I treat myself, talk to myself. The words I have used have not been kind. It is hard to change, hard to have something vital about you changed without your consent. But these are my eyes, now. These are my eyes that see so much more clearly now I don’t take them for granted. These are my eyes I want you to see, so I can stop pretending like I haven’t changed. So I can get back to the things I love doing… This is a flattering angle. I want to post something that shows the full extent of the damage but I’m still scared. I’ve just completed a clinical trial of a drug that helped tremendously. Yet I still might need surgery. But these are my eyes, for now, possibly for always, and it’s time to start being seen again. So this is where it begins. | Posted on 16/Oct/2024 17:20:26