Well it’s been four days and my eyes are not “adjusting” to the new glasses yet.
So I have to face the prospect of there being something wrong with the glasses.
God, that would suck. I was so happy to finally being able to see again. And the new glasses definitely help…. up to a point.
But my fine vision is crap. If the text on the screen is below a certain size, it’s a total smear to me. Above that, I can make it out, but it looks like it’s underwater. It has to be pretty god damned big for it to seem clear.
Like, large-print edition of Reader’s Digest big.
In summations, I am not sure having them on is a net gain in vision. And that’s kind of the entire point of glasses.
I keep finding myself looking over the top of them to actually see something clearly.
That kinda screams FAIL.
I’m not sure what could have gone wrong. I am positive I entered my prescription properly. I triple checked it.
So maybe it’s the manufacturer’s problem. Maybe they gave me the wrong lenses, or the lenses have a flaw in them, or the like.
There’s one more possibility, and I wish I hadn’t thought of it : maybe in the months between the eye appointment and my realizing I could buy glasses online now, my prescription changed and so the problem is in my eyeballs, in that sense.
That would suck because I’d have to pay for another eye appointment AND another pair of glasses to fix it.
Plus it would make me feel stupid.
Not fair, I know, but that’s depression for ya.
But I haven’t given up quite yet. I will keep wearing them till Friday and see if things get any better for these poor eyes of mine.
I hope they do.
Speaking of depression (how rare!), I’ve been pondering how it changes the way the whole world feels for me.
It’s most noticeable when I have just woken up. It’s like there is this undeclared sense organ between my sensorium and reality and depression alters and distorts that and that has a subtle but extremely profound effect on my mood and view of reality.
And it’s unstable. Fluctuations in those pesky neurotransmitter levels in my brain can completely change my reality in seconds.
And that, in turn, makes my world a scary and untrustworthy place, which is pretty damned depressing and makes me reluctant to add complications to my life like, say, going outside or dealing with people in real life because I never know what sort of reality I will have to contend with.
It’s like this effect is a chaos multiplier. Like I am always seeing a million reflections and hearing a million echoes of everything and so the slightest increase in stimulation is amplified to cacophonous and catastrophic levels.
No wonder I live this bomb shelter life.
I wonder how I get rid of all that amplification though. It’s the root cause of my issues and life would be so much better without it.
I don’t even know where it comes from. Some sort of feedback loop in my brain? Seems plausible. But then, how to turn it the fuck off?
Perhaps what is needed is desensitization. Force myself to stay in an overstimulating environment long enough to get used to it and realize I didn’t die.
Maybe that’s why I liked those times sitting outside on the way home from VFS so much. I got to actually adjust and adapt for once, instead of avoiding.
I avoid things so much it’s my goddamned diagnosis.
Unrelatedly, I am going to go lay down.
More after the break.
No need to feel safe
This is a mindwarping concept for me but I am going to give it a try.
This constant need for safety has dominated my life. I was a timid and fearful child and it’s only gotten worse as an adult. The world is a very scary place to me and I respond to that by hiding from it to the maximum of my ability.
There’s days when even getting out of bed feels like walking a tightrope.
Now obviously, every animal needs to feel safe. That’s basic. It only becomes pathological when that need grows well beyond what is necessary and balanced and instead makes it nearly impossible for the likes of me to life a normal, healthy, happy life like all the other critters.
And that’s the quagmire (giggity) I find myself in.
But what if I didn’t need to feel so safe any more?
What if I could handle risk? Danger? Exposure? And all those other things I have been running from my whole life?
What if I could say, “Yeah, it’s unsafe. So what?”
What if I could face all that fear with a kind of kamikaze courage and buoyant bravado that laughs in the face of all the ghosts and ghoulies of the imagination that my diseased mind can conjure and tells them to fuck off right to their face.
I’m not talking about having no fear. That would be stupid, and possibly fatal.
I’m talking about still having all that fear and just not giving a shit.
Ride the wave instead. Trade terror for exhilaration. Turn into the skid. Turn that loose adrenaline into something a lot more fun that general anxiety.
It’s a scary thought. Duh. But an exciting one as well. Might be a nice change to unflatten my aspect and emotionally engage in the world, with all that entails, instead of hiding in my inner bunker from the big bad world.
Which only got so big and bad because I was ignoring it. Shutting it out. If I could turn and face the strain and give my scared little animal a big warm hug and pet him until he falls asleep in my arms, I might just be able to live again.
Of course, this is all purely theoretical.
But everything starts with a dream….
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.