It was time. Even so, I freaked out when I lost my Ray-Bans. I’d them for eight years. They were dirty, the temples were loose, and I’d misplaced them over a dozen times over the years.
This time they were gone. I was at the beach. I’d moved. I left them in a store, by a pool, on the roof of a car, somewhere. They were gone and it was time to get new ones. My model is the round double bridge in black.
Why did losing the old pair make me so anxious? It’s the PTSD I’ve suffered from for eight years, going back to the nightmare Stasi political hit that was put on me in 2018. Everybody knows the symptoms of trauma—reliving the episode long after the fact, a fight-or-flight response (or “stay alert stay alive”), trouble with intimacy and trust. Another one is avoiding eye contact.
Sunglasses help you manage, especially avoiding eye contact. In 2018 communist opposition researchers followed me around, scrapped my computer, and made sure my face was all over the media. When it was over I treated myself to an electric bike, a new Carver skateboard, and a sharp pair of Ray-Bans. I wore them everywhere, and long after everyone had forgotten about me. They were a security blanket, protection. I wore them in church.
Sometimes I wore them at night—or at least at dusk and in overcast weather. Part of what the communists tried to do to me in 2018 was use my life as a teenager in the 1980s to bring down Brett Kavanaugh, a high school friend of mine who at the time had been nominated to the Supreme Court.
When it was over and I had my new shades, I recalled that back in the 1980s a waitress I worked with always told me I looked like Corey Hart, performer of the massive hit “Sunglasses at Night.” I looked the song up to hear it again, and was stunned at how closely the lyrics reflect my experience in 2018. The song’s ostensibly about uncovering the deceit of a lover. Yet consider them again in the connect of false sexual assault allegations, lies about who you are as a person, the ensuing trauma, the lethal games leftists play to gain power, interrogations by the police (the video in Hart's case, the FBI in my case), and the spiritual battle I was engaged in.
I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Watch you weave then breathe your story lines
And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Keep track of the visions in my eyes
And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Forget my name while you collect your claim
And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
See the light that's right before my eyes
That’s the poetic expression of my experience. The more clinical explanation comes from a paper published in The European Journal of Psychotraumatology:
In addition to thoughts or external reminders, avoidance has also been shown to prevent uncomfortable trauma-related emotions (emotional avoidance), including subjective, physiological and expressive components of emotional responses. Social cues conveying emotions, such as faces and gazes, may also trigger emotional experiences in the observer, causing discomfort. The computation of others’ emotions is fast and automatic, thereby facilitating the understanding and sharing of emotional states. The eyes play a critical role in social interactions and emotional contagion. In PTSD, gaze processing leads to sustained activation of the brain’s innate alarm. Avoiding eye contact may therefore reflect a coping mechanism for minimizing the emotional impact of others and reducing perceived threat. Eye avoidance may also explain the impaired recognition of fear and sadness observed in PTSD.
In the wonderful new book Buddhist Practices for Healing Trauma, Tim Desmond explores how one can heal from trauma by re-engaging with the world and avoiding self-pity. Because sunglasses can be a cool way to separate yourself, but also a way to sink into isolation and despair. “If we mistakenly believe that self-compassion means allowing ourselves to avoid challenges or difficult emotions,” Desmond writes, “we may end up reinforcing patterns of avoidance that ultimately lead to greater suffering. Genuine self-compassion acknowledges our pain but also calls us toward wisdom and action.”
He goes on: “Self-pity is another near enemy of self-compassion. While both involve recognizing suffering, self-pity can keep us stuck in a cycle of feeling powerless and overwhelmed. When we pity ourselves, we become absorbed in our own distress without seeking ways to care for ourselves. Self-compassion, on the other hand, acknowledges pain but also fosters a sense of agency—we recognize that suffering is a universal experience and that we have the capacity to meet it with warmth and care. A key distinction between self-pity and self-compassion is that self-compassion broadens our perspective. It helps us see that we are not alone in our struggles and encourages us to take steps toward healing. Self-pity, by contrast, isolates us, making it harder to connect with others and to see the possibilities for change.”
The possibilities for change. It’s time. I’m still getting new Ray-Bans. I’m just not going to wear them at night.