Demons in My Eyes

I have recently decided to try contacts. It was a casual decision. "You know, it might be nice to be able to see while I play soccer." My vision isn't so bad, but I need glasses to drive at night or I feel like I will die. I needed them in college when I sat in the back of the lecture hall.  I can't really see in movies without my glasses. It is nice to see.

So, contacts. They seemed pretty easy. A lot of my roommates had contacts. I have a couple of sister-in-laws who have them. I've seen the little ketchup like tube of saline solution next to those tiny twisty contact sized tupperware sitting on the bathroom sink. No one in my immediate family wears contacts.

I was so nieve. 

Contacts are like bludgeoning your eyes with your own finger. It is not intuitive.

First the eye doctor stuck his scratchy fingers into them. My eyes. I know because my eyes felt like they were being rubbed with cold sandpaper. Three times. The first pair were too blurry and didn't line up right with my astigmatism in my right eye. The second ones didn't line up with the astigmatism in the left eye. By this time the breath of my eye doctor was very unpleasant. It smelled like he'd been drinking recently, at 10:00 am. I didn't want to to think about that. The third pair stayed in. Basically, I sat in a chair, looked directly into a light, and was tortured three times. I would have told that man anything to make it stop.

"Can you see the letters on the bottom line better?" He asked for the third time.

"Yes. I can. Those letters have never seemed clearer." It was a lie, and I knew it. My stomach was nauseous. My eyes were burning.  My eyes were so disgruntled from the contact torture and lights, everything was blurry. And I was seeing bright lights everywhere in the office. Who knows what those letters on the screen were?

Then off I went to contact school. I hated contact school.

My instructor was a cute little gal with giant eyes.  She showed me how to put my eyelashes into submission while I put the contact in. It looked simple.

It wasn't.

I was able to bludgeon my own eye enough to get the contacts out. Then I needed to put them back in. It took forever. And ever. And ever. Both hands are needed in the task of contacting placing. One hand holds down the feisty eyelashes that have spent their entire existence keeping things out of my eye-successfully. Now I must break their  beautiful wills.The other hand balances the contact on the pointer finger. My instructor with giant eyes kept saying,"No," every time I attempted. She knew I was going to fail before I even got to my eye. "You aren't making your eye big enough." "You need to put the contact on the very tip of your finger." "You are blinking too soon."

AHHHHH!!!!!!!

My brain was thinking how my kids were at the park with friends, and it was starting to snow. I hadn't brought my cell phone. My brain was thinking about every friend I had in high school who "started wearing contacts" and they were superheroes disguised as ordinary teenagers. My brain was thinking how this wasn't that difficult. Maybe my eyes were too small?

My contact instructor assured me they were not too small. They were average.

I finally got the right eye in.

That is what it looks like when I got  the right one in, but I know I still have a whole other eye to go.

I couldn't get the left. I made the contact instructor with giant eyes do it for me. She got it on the first try.

Hello contact. We meet again.

I left the office. Humiliated. Discouraged-with blurred vision. And the contacts that were in my eyes were really irritating. I hated them. I hated the demons in my eyes.

I tried putting them in the next day. It did not go well.

I tried putting them in the day after. I was unsuccessful. I made my stomach hurt again, and I blamed it all on my three year old for constantly distracting me.

There are a lot of ways to do this wrong. One way is getting them stuck on eyelashes.

I tried again the next day. After 30 minutes, I was victorious. So, I guess I wear contacts now. For two hours. Until I take them out. Which is a whole other battle. 

For all you contact wearers, I applaud you. You don't hear it often enough. What you do is brave and difficult. Well done. 

Well done.