I put my eyes in prison

My safety glasses arrived.

Through the many years I wore only a contact, if anything, my left eye was subjected to no correction. It was very upset when I put this lens on it. It squirmed around. I saw double; things alternated between looking much more clear and much less clear. I don’t know if it is just glasses as usual or because one eye is too nearsighted to pick my nose, and the other is slightly farsighted (overlooking my nose entirely, I suppose), but with the glasses on each eye has a different focal length unless I look straight through the glasses.

Probably this is common to wearers of glasses. I suppose my eyes will be locked looking straight out of my skull for the rest of my life. This is probably why people who wear glasses develop a distinctive sag around their eyes; not a huge sag, but a characteristic softening. The eye-driving muscles are deprived of any function and wither away.

It’s more fun to look at life from all different angles.

4 Comment on "I put my eyes in prison"

  • I am struggling with the same thing, though not to the same degree. I am trying to get used to bifocals, the kind without a visible line. I am supposed to wear them all the time, but I just can’t do it. I think there is some mild correction for distance in one eye, but for the most part, they are for reading. When I am not reading they seem to be more of a hindrance to vision than a help. They only time they are really helpful is when I have to switch frequently from reading to distance. If I’m doing a lot of reading, straight reading glasses are better. And if I’m not reading, no glasses seems better than the bifocals.

  • It’s all a conspiracy. Don’t listen to them.

    The always say to wear your new glasses all the time, and in my experience, it’s no help at all. I can switch between my “good” glasses and my “around the house” glasses without much time to adjust at all. I like to let my eyes “re-set” between switching—take off one pair, let my eyes rest for 15 seconds, and then put on the other pair. I can feel my eyes adjust.

    If you don’t like them now, wearing them all the time probably won’t change that at all. You just have to get used to the fact that your eyes don’t work they way they’re supposed to, and keep putting on and taking off glasses.

    As for eyes being locked into looking straight ahead, I don’t really have that problem, because I don’t care if I can’t see everything perfectly. I’ll admit it’s harder to use periphial vision and ignore the frames with stronger prescriptions—it’s always more comfortable for me to wear my weaker prescriptions, which is why I do that all the time. It’s only for driving when I put on my good glasses, and then my eyes usually are “locked straight ahead” regardless.

    Of course, both my eyes are basically the same, so I don’t know how that effects it.

  • Arlan Post author

    I don’t know if people give enough credit for the different ways our eyes are able to interpret what we see, with training. When I first put on the glasses, my eyes didn’t want to cooperate at all. I could put in the contact, blink, and be on my way, but there seemed to be a power struggle going on where the right eye was saying, “Okay, I can see well now, I’m in charge,” and the left eye said, “No, I can see better now, I’ll still take the lead.”

    That subsided during the fitting process, but then when I got up and started walking the world seemed to move oddly; in motion, my eyes were having trouble synchronizing what they were seeing and everything seemed about to split into double vision. That feeling of immanent collapse persisted back to the car.

    I had the same feeling this morning when I set off at a fast walk, but it decreased throughout the day. My main complaint now is a feeling of eyestrain; it’s still work for my eyes to cooperate.

    I can take my glasses off but half the reason I went ahead and got them was because I noticed too many times when my vision was not adequate. About the only time I really don’t have any use for them, walking around, I need some kind of safety glasses anyway.

  • I think different people respond differently to glasses. I think some people do need time to adjust. Kevin recently was explaining how he was given new glasses that were different than bifocals (if I remember right) and he hated them. They wouldn’t “work” So after awhile he went back to his old glasses–and found he now hated them worse. So he went back to his new glasses and found that he liked them.

    The mind can be very weird.

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