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I was in my early 20s when I started wearing glasses to see distances. If it had been up to me, I would have held off getting the glasses as I was okay with things looking a little blurry, but when I started stating the letters on the bottom row of the eye chart with question marks... “E? X? No wait…T?”, my eye doctor insisted!
A couple of decades later, and I have noticed that my eyesight has worsened a bit. At my last annual check-up, I informed my eye doctor that it was getting harder to make the adjustment to read anything with my glasses on and so I needed to take them off and hold books or magazines or forms, closer. If I was wearing contact lenses, I found myself extending my arm the maximum distance it would go in order to read what I was holding. He remarked that this was normal for my age and would I like to get bifocals? I certainly wasn’t ready for bifocals (after all, my MOTHER wears bifocals) and promptly said “No thank you. I don’t mind taking my glasses on and off. It doesn’t really bother me.” I found his response interesting as he quietly, yet assertively, said “You will.” I mistakenly assumed, this was now a challenge to see how long I could, indeed, hold off…
In my efforts to curtail needing bifocals, I purchased inexpensive reading glasses and tried to wear my contact lenses more often. This seemed to result in more of a complication to see because I did not desire, in the least, to wear my readers around my neck and if I didn’t, I kept misplacing them.
In addition, 14 hours of contact wearing really started to bother my eyes. Since wearing my contacts was not a solution, I found myself starting to take my glasses on and off about a hundred times a day, which resulted in me constantly searching for where I placed them. It’s not that I actually forget where I place them, it’s just that I can’t clearly see anything further than about a foot in front of me and, therefore, can’t SEE where my glasses are. This has resulted in me accidentally sitting on or leaning on my glasses on more than one occasion. It has been only nine months since my last eye exam, and, despite my best efforts, I concede defeat. I am growing weary of making, what feels like, a tremendous effort, to see.
I guess getting bifocals is like so many other things in life; something we choose to do, simply because we are getting older, like eating less spicy foods and not wearing makeup to bed! I cannot stop my eyesight from growing worse any more than I can stop my hair from turning gray, but I certainly can, and will, find a way to make it less obvious. Or maybe, our eyesight growing worse as we age is just proportionate to what we want to see in the mirror—or, for that matter, NOT see.
Clairol. Clairol.
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!
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