Since second grade, I have seen the world through two panes of glass. It started when I had a little trouble seeing the board in class, which led to my first pair of massive-for-my-face tortoiseshell spectacles, which I proudly showed off to everyone I knew and would not take off, even for recess.
Every year or so since then, the lenses have gotten thicker, the squinting has gotten worse, and the percentage of people I can beat in a "hey-let-me-try-on-your-glasses" contest has increased (though thankfully the progression has become more logarithmic than exponential in the past few years).
I have an irrational fear of going blind - and it isn't completely unfounded.
I am pretty severely myopic, with an astigmatism in my right eye (in English, very near-sighted with a weird shape in the back of my eye). I've also read way to much about macular degeneration causing vision loss in those with severe myopia (disconnect between the retina/image capturing part and the optic nerve), so I'd say my fear is not unfounded.
When I look at myself in the mirror unaided, my face looks like Edward Munch's Scream or Doctor Who's Silence - pits for eyes, not much of a nose, splotchy skin, a hole for a mouth. The rest of everything looks like a Mark Rothko painting - defined colors and shapes that definitely mean something, but the edges are undefined.
That I can't see well without my glasses has led to some odd behavior on my part. I have a habit of closing my eyes or leaving the light off to try to navigate a room I know without seeing it, just in case. I'm not bad at it, either. To my mother's chagrin, I am really bad at parting my hair, because unless I am right up against the mirror, I literally cannot see it clearly. Similarly, makeup - if my focal length is about 8-12 inches on a bad day, and my hand takes up three of those, there's no way I can actually see what I am doing in a mirror while holding another 2-6 inches worth of make-up applicators. Beyond just fidgeting, I touch or fiddle with a lot of stuff unconsciously just to get a sense of the textures. I am hyper-reactive to loud sounds, and sometimes paranoid about people sneaking up to me because my peripheral vision is uncorrected. My ears are just about as important to me at sensing my environment as my eyes are. I have worn my massive prescription sunglasses indoors on more than one occasion just because I would rather look like a huge jerk than not be able to see.
Beyond that, I tend to be hypersensitive with anything coming near my eyes, from eye drops to the glaucoma machine at the eye doctor's to raindrops. When I play soccer, I unconsciously make liberal use of the handball exception for protecting one's face. I'm not great around bright lights or fireworks. I'm kinda terrified of contacts. And again, I suck at makeup.
For what it's worth, I can actually function surprisingly well for someone with really bad eyesight. I can get around, avoid most obstacles, and perform tasks without glasses (although they all tell me not to hold the phone that close to my face because I'll ruin my eyes - too late).
At the end of the day, despite the minor paranoia, do I really think I'm going to go blind?
Not in the near future, but-
There seems to be a trend toward getting worse, so who knows? Also, apparently, the powers that be have cured blindness in mice, so maybe by the time I need it, that procedure will make my fears completely moot. Also, Pokemon taught me how to read braille.
I just hope I'll be able to see it coming, but for now, I think I'll be fine.
