12:33PM - Thursday August 12, 2003
Vision
So, I'm pretty blind. In fact, I've been wearing glasses or contacts for so long, I don't actually remember ever waking up and just being able to see. It's a strange way to grow up. There's things I could say right now that only people who grew up wearing glasses could understand. FOr instance, lying in the back seat of the car with your glasses off at night. The lights expode into these luminous snowflake/star shapes, all different colours of orange and white and blue. It's pretty amazing. I could never draw it.

I remember the first time I was able to see the Little Dipper--I was eleven, and I'd just gotten my first pair of contacts. I'd been wearing glasses since I was six, and my eyesight was deteriorating do fast I had to get a new prescription every six months. I could see the Big Dipper, but I couldn't see the little one, it was too faint. Anyway, one night I was out stargazing with my dad, and I could see it! As a little girl I loved the stars so much, it was always frustrating to not be able to see them. And then suddenly I could.

Of course, at eleven, contacts were hard to get used to. I swear hte first month my mom and I spent at least ten minutes on our hands and knees with flashlights in the bathroom because I kept dropping my lenses while I was trying to put them in. And my very first pair ripped while I was wearing them because of a manufacturing defect. And once while I was swinging upside down ont he swings at school, a big lump of dirt fell in my eye and knocked out my lens and I had to rinse it under the tap and then spit on it to get it back in because I ahd no solution with me and my mom wasn't home to receive my frantic phonecall.

Now it's twenty years later and I'm kind of sick of the whole rigamarole. I swear, if I ever get enough money, I'm getting the laser surgery. I want to be able to open my eyes in the morning and see without having to scramble for my glasses.

this whole entry was prompted by the fact that I had an optometrist appointment last week. Everything is doing fine, my prescription is stable, and I'm doing a trial with some new lenses. I guess the technology has made huge leaps int he last year and a half, and there's lenses made out of a new material that's more rigid, ahs less water in it, but lets in 400-500% more oxygen, which is something I have to be concerned about because of the strength of my prescription.

One stretch of years where I was really poor right after I moved here, I wore the same contacts for nearly seven years. The last year and a half, I only ha done contact because the other one died. I couldn't even wear my glasses because they had only one lens. Needless to say, by the time I got to the eye doctor, my one eye was in pretty rough shape. It was starving for oxygen, and I think some macular degenration was setting in from the blood vessels overgrowing to try and get some oxygen. Very bad. This is why I now have disposables--they're much healthier for my eyes.

So, this trial is pretty exciting--normal people can even wear these lenses to sleep in, even though I'm not allowed. It's pretty cool. My eyes actually feel a little drier because I think more air is getting to them. I can actually see better, though, because the rigidity of the lens is helping to correct a slight astigmatism I have as well. I think I like them, even if they're more expensive, they last for a month as opposed to two weeks.

Another thing I wonder is how being unable to see affects my art and how I perceive and recreate things. I remember being fascinated with the reflection of my inner eyelid I could sometimes see if the morning sun hit my glasses just right on the bus ride to school. It looked like a giant writhing hairless caterpillar with big spines coming out of it. I also wonder how other people see the world. I wonder how different it is, and what it must be like to wake up in the middle of the night and not have to grope your way to the bathroom.

I do have some advantages, though. I'm so blind that I unconsciously train myself to manouever in my apartment in pitch black. I don't understand people who can't, like Butch, who can't get around her apartment in the dark without running into things, and who can't operate her remote without looking at the buttons. I have a remote for my stereo in my bedroom, and I know the buttons by touch. I guess I've got a good start if I really do go blind. I know how many steps to get to anywhere in my apartment. It's a total way of life for me.

I met a guy recently who's as blind as I am, and it was fun to share all the experiences we had in common. His fiance calls him "Blind-y" when she sees him two inches from his contact lens case making sure his last contat made it in to the solution. Heh.

So, can you see? What's it like?

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