Contact!

Thursday afternoon I went to the eye doctor and picked up the first pair of contact lenses I've worn in three or four years. I had chosen this eye doctor specifically because they advertise that they can find contact lenses that will work even for people who've had problems with contacts in the past, and that definitely describes me. In middle school I wore gas permeable lenses and couldn't stand them. I felt like I had little rocks in my eyes all day long. In high school I switched to disposable soft lenses, which were way better, but they seemed to suck my eyes dry. So for the last few years I've just worn glasses, but still my eyes are always red and dry. I think most people assume I'm on crack.

So I talked to my new eye doctor and he told me that (you'll never guess...) I have dry eyes. Which makes contacts problematic. As I've experienced before, my eyes don't have enough of a protective tear layer to make hard lenses comfortable, and soft lenses dry up the little moisture I have. Because I'm vain and stubborn, though, I'm trying soft lenses again anyway. I just can't wear them for more than seven or eight hours at a time (though I might work up to longer stints) and I have to put rewetting drops in about every other hour. They're fine for most everything except staring at a computer screen... which unfortunately is what I spend most of my time doing.

It's not that I don't like glasses per se. The frames themselves don't bother me at all; it's the lenses that reshape my face because they're so darn strong. They shrink my eyes down to little itty bitty dots, which especially next to my big nose look oddly proportioned. If you can't picture what I'm talking about, just compare these two pictures of me, the first with glasses and the second without: