Seven years ago, I ended up needing to wear glasses. Not the occasional, put’em on when I need’em type, but the wear’em all the time type. Anyone who’s gone for an eye exam, or seen one (even if only on TV), knows those charts. Bet most of you did pretty well.
Imagine having to squint to see that lonely letter at the top. And even then, it’s as fuzzy as a Persian cat.
I literally could not focus on anything sitting further away than the length of my own arm. When you’re driving, that’s an awfully dangerous problem. Luckily I’d an extra set of eyes with me most of the time: those in my aunt’s head. Those times without her, well … I drove by marking where the car-shaped blobs were and hoping my distance judging kept up. At night, I it was brake lights.
How joyful I was to see something as mundane as the individual leaves on the tree above me. The people around me had faces once again.
So anyway, after those seven years, I started getting the same darn headaches I used to get. They sit just above the gap between a person’s eyebrows and drill into your skull like some lunatic’s play toy. No over-the-counter painkiller manages to get rid of them completely. The only solution that fully works: sleep. It affects everything I do: my writing, my rendering, my TV watching. Mercifully, being short-shorted means I can read just fine. Being unable to do the rest is a bother and that’s putting it lightly.
Off I trot to the various stores. Two weeks to wait for lenses? No thank you. Ten days? Nup. A week? Getting better. Finally, I give up and return to the birthplace of my last pair. Two days (four if you include the weekend). Sort of odd to know I’ve yet again been driving illegally because of my eyes. My vision has almost doubled in severity, which means that, with my current lenses I’ve the same level of vision I had all those years ago before I even got these glasses. Those car-shaped blobs no longer have any distinctive shape at all. Which is a little scary.
But I’ve just gotten the much-awaited-on call saying that my lenses have arrived. By noon tomorrow, I shall see the world anew.
Experience tells me she shall be beautiful.
Aldrea Alien 