I think we’re a bit overdue for another open thread for personal stuff. As per usual, no trolls, no flames, no being a butthead.
I’ll paste in some recent personal comments from other threads.
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Open Thread for Personal Stuff: November Rain Edition
Tonight my dad told me that, several years ago, an eye doctor told him that I have to get eyeglasses. Apparently I have 20/60 vision and a mild astigmatism.
Part of me is accepting of the idea of wearing glasses because it’ll be for my benefit. At the same time, I really don’t want to wear glasses. First of all, I’ve never experienced any major eye problems personally – the most bothersome thing that has happened is that I sometimes find it a little difficult to look at something very, very closely – like once something is within half a foot away from me, I get a little bit of double vision. Other than that, I have no other difficulties whatsoever in my experience.
Second, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea of wearing glasses. I remember hating that idea when I was a kid, and those feelings have stayed with me. And third, it’s my dad telling me all of this. Maybe I’m being whiny and immature for saying this, but I just really hate having to listen to him about decisions done for my own well-being. I just never want him to have any say in my life. Ugh. It’s a mess.
Why is he just telling you this NOW?
It’s not whiny and immature to question whether an abusive and gaslighting person is doing something for your own well being or if there is alternative reasons behind it.
He told me today because he was reminded of my condition once he had to take my little sister to the eye doctor (she needs glasses as well apparently).
I don’t really doubt that he is trying to help me out, but I just don’t want to be helped by him. No matter what he does, it’s always like he’s trying to control me and deprive me of agency.
@ally
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3d/1f/2c/3d1f2cc84ee1ada3cc9d96c774c9fd64.jpg
Get contacts? I imagine your astigmatism can’t be that bad if you can read without glasses (I cannot, which is why I wear them pecunium, even if yours are much stronger 😛 )
But I could get contacts anyways, so you probably can. Nobody has to know you’re wearing them and it isn’t what your father wants, win win.
Katz — ah, ok. Then no, sorry. I asked my mother and everyone she knows who’s doing cat adoptions is on the same end you are.
Pecunium! Know anyone in LA area who wants a kitty? I don’t know anyone out that way, but pretty sure you do.
He’s very much opposed to contact lenses, for reasons I don’t know. I’ll see if I can convince him anyway, though. I hope I can do it without him shaming me with baseless accusations of arrogance like “Oh, well forget about the glasses – clearly you know everything and your eyes are perfect!”
I love my glasses, but then no one forced/pressured me into getting them. Objectively, though, your vision is usually better with contact lenses; it’s just that after years of them, suddenly I was experiencing terrible dry/red eyes after a day’s work. I think most optometrists will support contact lenses as the better option, but vision insurance plans are generally terrible and support glasses over contact lenses. My insurance actually penalizes me if I try to use it to cover contact lenses, whereas it will cover a great deal of the cost of glasses.
Do you have trouble reading at all, Ally? If so, you could just get glasses for the close-up stuff; you might not need to wear them all the time.
What I can see coming out of this is that if you do get ’em, the parental unit will want to choose the frames. There are so many really nice frames around, even among the not-ridiculously-expensive types, but bozo will undoubtedly want you in the ugliest he can find.
But if you escape that – and you’ll be able to get glasses of your choice eventually, if you do have to wear them – you might find that the pleasure of being able to see better than before makes up for it. If you’ve (general you) got dodgy eyesight and can’t recall having any other sort, it’s a really nice surprise to find out how well you see with specs on.
Have you ever had a look through magnifying glasses, the sort you get at a pharmacy? I use them for knitting, now, since my prescription specs don’t help for that. I’m short sighted and have worn glasses since I was 16, but now I’m getting the long-sighted thing that comes with age happening. (Be nice if they’d meet in the middle and give me 20/20, but noooo, of course that’s not going to happen.)
@kitteh
Honestly, I don’t have any trouble reading. I’ve never had a headache just from reading for a long time. I don’t even experience any difficulty when I stare at a laptop screen in a dark room. If it’s super bright, then yeah I might get a headache, but that’s not indicative of an eye problem as far as I know. And beyond all of that, I have a habit of looking away from the screen/book I’m reading every once in a while to give my eyes a break.
I don’t think he’ll be too controlling in that regard, and I’m sure he’ll want me to choose good frames. But at the same time his preference is going to be shaped by what he thinks looks good on a “young man”, which is shitty for obvious reasons.
I mean, I understand the benefits of eyeglasses, and I don’t think I’d look bad in them (they’ll make my face look smaller, for one thing) – I just don’t want to be pressured into wearing them. I generally don’t like to be pressured to make any personal choice that only affects me.
Do you drive, Ally? If you had 20/60 vision, the DMV would have caught that. I have astigmatism with 20/40 vision in my left eye, 20/30 or so in the right, and I can just barely pass the eye test with my left eye. One year, I read the left portion wrong and the woman administering the test subtly gave me the answer and let me take it again.
I don’t wear glasses, except reading glasses, which is to be expected at my age, but if my vision were just a tiny bit worse, I don’t think I’d be able to get along without them.
I’m not saying that your dad is lying to you, but is it possible he is so wrapped up in his own idea of controlling you for your own good that he’s remembering wrong?
That “for your own good” should have been in quotes up there – obviously his controlling behavior is not good for you!
Well, I used to have a valid driving permit, and I was asked to do an eye test when I was trying to apply for it. I passed very easily. And I don’t seem to have any vision-related driving issues, either.
That seems very likely, given that he tries to make me feel guilty for not doing what he says. And he also tends to suffer from minor memory problems these days.
Doesn’t sound like you need glasses at all, then. ::smh::
You could always get a test done if it’s affordable (do they bulk-bill eye tests at all in the US?) to confirm you don’t need them. That might shut him up for five minutes.
Ooh… the Editor of the OED just gave Dawkins a bit of a swipe:
re your father…
No way that you have 20/60 vision and don’t know about it; much less the astigmatism he’s added in.
That’s a significant loss of vision, meaning you can see about 1/3rd the distance of most people (i.e. what person with normal vision can see at 60′ you have to be 20′ from to make out).
Do you recall having an eye exam, with an optometrist? If not, then there is no way for an astigmatism to be known, as that is a distortion from round (things which are round appear to be enlongated/oval).
Can you read a street sign from across the street? If so, you don’t have 20/60 vision.
Yeeeaaah, Ally, I think your dad is stepping up his creeper game. I mean, I do have glasses, which I very rarely use (mostly for when I’ve been doing art way too long and need to rest my eyes) but yeah, you can’t NOT NOTICE 20/60 vision.
The last eye exam I had was when I was 12. And honestly, I don’t even remember having it. My dad just told me about it recently.=S
Yeeeaaaah, I dunno Ally, this smells really rotten and off to me.
At this point your dad is seriously just making shit up so he can force you to do things.
This one may not be a big problem because, unless he actually has the prescription from when you were 12, you’ll need to get a new eye exam anyway before you can get new glasses (I don’t know many places where you can just walk in and say “get me some 20/60 glasses”). And when you get the exam, it sounds pretty likely that you’ll turn out to be fine.
Re: needing glasses. Eyesight changes all the time, that’s why people generally need a prescription when they buy glasses to fix eyesight – to make sure it’s an accurate measurement of your current sightedness. And most places warn against filling out a prescription older than 2 years old, because again, quality of sightedness changes as you get older (usually worse, but sometimes for the better). Also, each eye will have a different vision level. If the glasses are the off-the-rack pharmacy kind, they’re probably not going to work correctly for both eyes and can actually damage your sight by over correcting.
I’d side-eye (pun slightly intended) any glasses whose use is based on a diagnosis made 7 years ago. That’s just not how it’s done.
katz — you can’t. Or at least, I can’t. But well…
“If not, then there is no way for an astigmatism to be known, as that is a distortion from round (things which are round appear to be enlongated/oval).”
Which is why I bother wearing them my dear! If you’d left them on and not been futzing for yours back, you’d have gone all “what’s straight? where’s up?”
I have astigmatism. Generally unless one moves one head on the Z-axis cylinder (the unit of correction for astigmatism) isn’t notable unless it’s after dark (at which point the coronae of lights is oval).
Since my astigmatism is at the level where paying for toroidal lenses isn’t worth it, I tend to not wear contacts after dark (when I use them).
As to prescriptions. I think Calif. has a 2 year limit on getting lenses made from a prescription.
Now I have to hope the stupidity which is WP password management doesn’t bite me in the ass.
I can fix it if it does. Once I solve what the FUCK the flag comment plugin broke (it works locally, so I have a confuzed)
No, you can’t. It has to do with how WP keeps track (or fails to) between different WP accounts for the same user.