Hello HC Cuties! So a couple of weeks (months? I stopped trying to keep track of time after my first round of midterms) ago I wrote about the struggles of having to wear glasses in order to remedy the problems that my defective eyes caused. Fast forward to some time after I wrote that, and I am now the proud owner of contact lenses! Yes, I love them way more than glasses, but I have to say, it is also not an easy road to take. Here I’ll rant about some of the problems I’ve encountered while wearing contacts, and hopefully some of you will be able to relate!
1) Dry eyes
Basically the worst thing to encounter. When it’s windy, your contacts dry out so you have to blink constantly unless you want your eyelids to never be able to close again. In the heat, the contacts do this weird steamy/fog thing (kind of like that car in the sexy scene of Titanic) and you just have to blink and hope it goes away before you have to do something important.
2) Having to buy that pesky contact solution
I can attest to having to buy at least 15 of those bottles in a year. I even tried to get my optometrist to prescribe me some so my insurance would pay for it. Spoiler alert: apparently they don’t do that. Well excuse me for trying to save money. Solution: just buy the cheapest ones in bulk at Walmart.
3) Running out of contacts
My doctor gave me the 2-week wear contacts to start off and they’ve been working pretty well. Those two weeks actually go by really fast and by the time you go looking for your new pair to put on, you usually realize you forgot to order/go pick up new ones. Which brings me to my next point…
4) Those few days of wearing them after their time is up
The struggle of having to wear your contacts for longer than you’re supposed to. I am not going to lie, this has happened to me several times where I’m just like “I’ll wear them for maybe one or two more days while my new ones get shipped in.” Trust me, those suckers know when their productivity time is up and even one day after their two weeks are up, they get all gross and foggy. Or is that just me?
5) Can’t swim/shower in them
According to all the contact-wearing people I have polled, apparently you can swim and shower with them on. I personally would rather not because of one traumatic shower experience where my contact came out of my eye and landed on my cheek.
6) Having to touch your eyeball every time you put them on
I’m no Rachel from FRIENDS, but touching my eyeball every time I put in my contacts does freak me out a little. Plus you have to make sure your hands are always immaculate before they go anywhere near your eye or else you could get all sorts of nasty infections.
7) Getting makeup/mascara/fluff/dirt in your eye
You forget to put them on before you applied your makeup and now you have to suffer with having to put your contacts on after applying mascara. Mascara burn is the worst. Trust me. Little fluffs are even worse though, especially when you can’t see them on the actual contact but you can feel it and aren’t able to do anything about it.
8) Falling asleep in them
Apparently having your contacts on for too long, especially while you’re sleeping, deprives your eyes of getting much needed oxygen, which could potentially make your eyesight even worse! You don’t want to be like that girl that kept her contacts on for 6 months and got a parasite that made her blind, do you?
9) Losing them inside your eye socket
So this one kind of goes with the last one. Be careful when you fall asleep because the contact does move around a lot. Ask poor little 17-year-old me who took a nap only to find one of her contacts was hiding in the back of her eyeball. Don’t worry, I was able to get it back to its rightful position with a lot of blinking.
10) Knowing that even though you’re fooling the world, you know your vision will never be perfect
Again, all you can do is embrace it or laser it.