I got contacts for the first time when I went away to college because I have insanely strict parents. They finally let me have them because at that point I could pay for them and for the doctor's visit. I wish they had let me have them long before then. For me, it's not a matter of cosmetics and looking better because I've been told by plenty of people that I look equally good in both contacts and glasses. The simple thing is I SEE better with contacts. My glasses are strong enough for me for about the first three weeks -- after that, it's like my eyes get used to the prescription, and anything more than fifty feet away gets a bit blurry. With my contacts in, I can see clearly for miles. Having contacts would have been so much easier in high school since I wouldn't have had to squint at the chalkboard on the rare occasions I was assigned a seat in the back -- the benefits of having a last name starting with "G."
I don't wear my contacts the "right" way. They're two week disposables, only I don't wear them for two weeks. They are perfectly fine after only two weeks, so I wear them until my eyes feel dry most of the time. Then I chuck them and get a new pair. I NEVER wear them to sleep -- and I really don't understand the people who can. It hurts to wake up in the morning to find your contacts dried to your eyeball. Oww. My other problem is my right eye is considerably worse than my left eye, by an entire prescription point, or whatever it is that it's called. Fortunately, I don't have an astigmatism, like my poor husband, so my contacts are relatively cheap.
The last year or so, I haven't even made it to the prescribed two weeks for the contacts for my left eye. Sometimes I can, but I know I just put this contact in last week and now it already has a tear in it. I'm wearing it out of desperation because I don't have any more at this moment and because I can't stand the idea of wearing my glasses and having slightly fuzzy vision. Plus I plan on cross-stitching while I watch tv later tonight (hopefully to see the Mariners tear up the Yankees again -- SO THERE, you Yankee fans! You got your butts kicked by the WORST team in the AL West -- for now, anyhow), and if I have my glasses on while I stitch, if I glance up to the tv it's insanely fuzzy. So I shall suffer today, and hopefully 1-800-Contacts will deliver my contacts early next week like they usually do.
I don't know why my left contact is always getting torn and ripped. I take them out carefully, I never sleep in them, and I always clean them each night. I know it's not the fluid I'm using because if that were the case, wouldn't it tear my right contact as well? Plus I have used more than one kind of fluid in the last year, and my left contact seems to tear regardless of what fluid I use.
I had a friend when I lived in Illinois who was more than half blind. We all thought she was hella cool back then because she assured us she came from an area that was "rough" and full of gangstas. And she was tough. I don't recall why she had eye problems, but I do know she was totally blind in her left eye and more than half blind in her right. She could still read if she was given large print (REALLY large print) books and held them right up to her right eye. She always used to try to gross us out with stories of her left eye -- how small insects would fly into her eye and the acidity of the eye would devour them, how she can't have a glass eye because her eye socket rejected it. I figure if her left eye can eat insects, maybe my left eye eats contact lenses... who knows??
I can't wear my glasses today anyhow. It's a sunny day, and who knows where my clip-on sunglasses are at this point?? Yeah, I live in the Northwest, where it supposedly rains all the time, and I have needed sunglasses more often than not this spring. Not that I'm complaining -- sun is good!
Trust me, it doesn't rain "all the time" in Seattle. It's just something they tell the folks from out of town to keep this area as quiet and small as possible. :o)