Lens of Chaos

A comedy of errors

I’ve been wearing glasses for the past 16 years now. But lately, as my screen time has shot up so has the power of my spectacles. I usually don’t shy away from sporting my dorky glasses, but there are times when wearing them is just not an option. Be it persistent fogging while wearing a mask (thanks pandemic) or slipping mishaps during intensive workouts, the struggle with glasses is real.

I looked into permanent corrective eye surgery, but the ophthalmologist advised me against it owing to some complications.

Reluctantly, I had to turn to face my worst nightmare.

Contact Lenses.

Allow me to share some of my irrational fears

1. Touching my eye ball.

2. Poking my eye ball.

3. Losing the lenses in my eye socket

4. Sleeping with lenses on only to realise they’ve dissolved in my eyes

5. Feeling warm and cosy near a fire until the lenses start melting away in my eyes

6. Contaminating my lenses with eye liner or kohl leading to a complete loss of vision

7. Accidentally breaking my lenses during a casual eye rub

Needless to say, I was not looking forward to the experience. But given a lack of other choices, I dragged my feet to the optician and got myself a set.

With a mirror propped in front of me and my laptop buzzing with instructions from “How to wear contact lenses” videos, I got down to business.

Easy. Should be done in under 5 minutes. I thought.

Never have I ever been so wrong.

Sticky Situation

It took me long to extract the lens from its case. And even longer to figure out how to hold it steady on my fingertip.

Once I finally mastered that skill, came the real challenge.

To hold my eye open in the face of a dangerously close finger.

My eyes fluttered with repulsion, but I managed to sneak a lens in.

Tragedy followed later when I couldn’t manage to get the other one in place.

I was stuck now.

Neither could I wear my glasses over the one lens. Nor had I figured out how to remove contact lenses.

Skipping the “How to remove contact lenses” videos was probably not a wise choice in hindsight.

My irrational fears came rushing back to haunt me. Fighting back, I took a deep breath and gave it another go.

After many a miss, I tasted sweet success at last.

All it took was 40 minutes, 7 of my eyelashes, and a whole lot of tears.