four eyes

I'm getting glasses.

It seems weird, because I thought I had missed that gene. All five of my siblings (who have a different mother than me) have had really poor eyesight all their lives, whereas I thought I took after my mother, who only needed glasses for reading when she was about fifty. I didn't need them in the mandatory eyesight check at age five, before I started school, so it never occurred to me to get them checked again.

Then I tried on a friend's glasses, just for fun, and - astonishingly - everything was clearer!

So I went and got my eyes checked, crossing my fingers that I would actually need them, but not too much, so that glasses for me would be like a cool accessory rather than a hindrance. And it turns out my vision is not really bad - it's 85%, and you need 80% to drive without glasses - but it's bad enough that glasses will help me. It also turns out that one eye is longsighted and the other is shortsighted. That seems bizarre to me, but perhaps it's quite normal.

Cool accessory it is! Then I found out that (a) this cool little accessory was going to cost me about $500; and (b) spectacles are quite different from sunglasses on the face, and it was really hard to find a pair that I actually liked or felt pretty in.

Flatmate to the rescue! Rosie came, looked at the three frames I'd set aside, went "no, no and no", and then proceeded to help me find a really cool pair of frames that I really liked that were not ridiculously over-the-top expensive (I liked some Prada ones more, but given that the price tag would be close to a grand, my attraction to them rapidly dissipated). When I get the glasses, I will provide photos.

Now that I know I need glasses, it is suddenly becoming clear to me how unclear my vision is. How easily my eyes get tired. How many headaches I get from staring at a screen or books all day. How the edges of some things are blurred; sometimes even double. But the funny thing is, before I tried on my friend's glasses, I didn't notice at all. And I'm really glad that soon things are going to change.

So if you are someone who has always assumed you have wonderful vision and never bothered to get your eyes checked, I would highly recommend it.