Four days have passed since I got contacts. This morning I had a freaky experience, but there’s a bit of a back-story first, so bear with.

On Wednesday, my second day and my first attempt at putting the damn things in without the presence of a nurse, I had a bitch of a time. Try as I might, I just couldn’t a lens into my right eye. Granted, my unskilled self was more than a little heavy-handed with my already irritated eyes, and after almost twenty minutes, I could barely keep my eye open. Frustrated as I was, I kept at it and somehow finally managed to get the lens in. However, something was off. I looked in the mirror and the contact seemed wrinkled. I blinked several times, attempting to smooth it out and center it, but my eyesight was still blurry. I looked closer. I no longer saw a contact. Nearly frantic, I started scoping under my eyelids, looking for it, but found nothing. I came to the conclusion that the lens had likely popped out of my eye, lost somewhere.

Unfortunately, I only had one set of contacts that the doctor gave me to try out before ordering a six month supply. So, there I was, one contact in and the other eye naked. I was already late for work, so I figured that I would just go as I was and quickly hit my eye doctor’s office, conveniently located across the street from where I work. I rode the subway into Manhattan in a weird state of blur/non-blur, semi-disoriented with both of my eyes very, very bloodshot. Not an unfamiliar state of being for me, but unusual in the circumstances of it’s being brought about.

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Yesterday, after bitching, kvetching and planning, I finally got off my ass and went to an optometrist and got contact lenses. At thirty-one, I’ve had glasses since second grade. I only began wearing them and thereby becoming dependent on them, since 2002. Before that, blind as I am, I somehow semi-successfully lived with the blur.

However, wearing glasses, day in and day out, shortly began to drive me up the fucking wall. Along with a shifty personality, I also have an suspicious look about me. My face is ever so slightly shifted right, with a slightly crooked nose and the left ear a tad bit higher than the other. This evidence of derelict genes makes it pretty much impossible to wear a pair of glasses in a straight position. Try as I may to set them correctly, within a few minutes, they would once again be askew, further contributing to the tendency of women, children and senior citizens giving me a wide berth when in public. I always look a bit off, which isn’t really that misleading, if I were to be speaking truthfully. I was raised wrong. Mercury is not an acceptable substitute for Kook-Aid. Take note, parents everywhere.

Still, as suspect as I may appear, I need to see. Living in a blur sucks. People hate you because you never wave back to them when they spot you from across the street. You get lost easily when navigating by street sign and everyone assumes you are perpetually angry because you maintain a constant, tortured squint. You’re lonely and consistently bitchy, so you suck it up and wear the fucking eye-goggles.

These past few months, the drudgery of being chained to my glasses in order to fully or even semi-function has really started to chisel at my testicles with a rusty leprechaun. An unpleasant experience. I decided to suck up all the neurotic fears I have about eyeballs, eyelids (and their insides) and touching things moist and made an appointment to get some contact lenses.

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