It’s not that I wanted to stick a foreign object in my eye.
It’s that so many of you do it.
Make it look so easy. Make it sound like a good idea.
OK, so I wanted to be like you. And my sister.
This is a story about trying to see more clearly.
See, it’s never really been a problem for me.
The kid who needed glasses before third grade just to see the chalkboard. Back when classrooms had chalkboards.
That was never me.
Things started to shift, or rather blur, a few years ago.
It seemed overnight I went from “Oh, these low-level readers make things a little easier to see” to panicking if I don’t have pairs stashed all over the house, car, purse, kitchen, buried on a random street corner, just so that I can always see.
And then, there’s this. Recently, I started noticing that reading wasn’t the only thing that appeared blurry.
So, in I went for an eye test.
Sure enough, though I could technically call myself 20/20, the optometrist said, indeed, I could use some correction.
My sister told me about contacts that are readers and corrective lenses in one.
It was time to be like you big kids.
I had no qualms. Even when the doctor asked, “Do you have trouble touching your eye?”
Nope. Not one.
That’s when cocky left the building.
I have struggled. Tremendously.
I cannot get those things in.
And don’t get me started with out.
I do everything from watch YouTube videos, have one of my kids coach me, to meditate.
My low point was having to call Husband into the bathroom last night to get my lenses out.
Contact lenses: 1.
Me: Big Fat Zero
The CDC says 30 million Americans wear contact lenses. That’s 29,999,999 of you popping those suckers in and out of your eyes without thinking. Or blinking.
Somewhere between stretching my upper lid to Mars and scratching my left eye, things came into focus.
Not so much my vision, but one of those life lessons that show up when you don’t expect it.
The reminder of what it feels like to be a failure. Have you been there, Dear Reader?
So frustrated with something that seems incredibly easy for “everyone” else while you cannot figure it out?
Trying to have a baby while the world appears to be pregnant. Even a dumb teenager can get knocked up and you can’t get that egg and sperm to have a party.
How everyone else seems to be able to find a kind spouse, stay on a diet, cook a gourmet meal without looking at a recipe.
Except you.
I think the truth is sometimes we just suck. I’m right there with you in the land of frustration.
Maybe lenses just aren’t for me.
I mean you should see how fabulous I look with my readers on.
Which I know you can do because you have those contacts in your eyes.
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