bifocals

I’ve been wearing my new bifocals for about a week now and the headache they gave me in the beginning is starting to go away. I didn’t think I could get used to them and I’m still not sure that I can. These are not for close and far, they are for close and really close. I found myself swapping out different strength pairs of glasses when I was working on the computer: one for the computer, a stronger pair for reading books or papers. It just felt ridiculous. So I went for the bifocals for computer (arm’s length as the eye doc said) and reading. But I’m having a tough time getting used to shifting my eyes and my head every time I want to read something. If something’s arm’s length – like the computer – I’m looking through the top part. But the hard line – I’m not sure why he ordered a hard line, but he did – seems to be right in my line of vision so I have to slide the glasses a little bit down my nose which makes them not quite right. As I approach the bottom of the computer screen I have to either drop my head or lower the glasses because I don’t want to be looking through the lower, stronger, part of the glasses – it’s too strong and it blurs the arm’s length stuff. Then if I want to read actual paper I have to slide the glasses back up toward my eyes and tilt my head counter-intuitively up instead of down so I can sink my eyeballs to look through the reading half of the lenses. Oi. The entire operation still requires way too much fiddling, although now with a single pair of glasses. The line in the middle still gives me a headache. It feels like my vision is literally resting on that line. Sometimes it feels as though I’m looking directly through it and that makes me feel like I’m an old camera lens where you brought top and bottom halves of your screen together to adjust focus. Everyone with bifocals told me I’d get used to it quickly and then I’d do it without thinking. Still awaiting that conversion moment.