My vision started deteriorating when I turned 50 years old. Before that, I had never needed any kind of visual correction. But, almost as if a switch got flipped on my 50th birthday, and the warranty on my eyes expired, my eyesight got progressively worse as I aged into my fifties. It got to the point that I needed corrective lenses to drive safely. I also needed reading glasses to read, including reading small text like preparation instructions on food packaging. I’m sure you other oldsters are familiar with this experience.

Now I constantly juggle among three sets of glasses: a prescription pair for getting about in the space of life, and essential for both driving and watching TV; another prescription pair for the computer (with the blue light filter); and then generic reading glasses for books and sometimes the cell phone. I should probably use the computer glasses with the cell phone, but some apps have such small fonts that I need better magnification to clearly read the text. It seems the only time I’m not wearing glasses is when I’m showering, or when I’m sleeping.

The worst part of it is that I have terrible double vision at medium and long distances. My prescription actually doesn’t do much for the focus of my eyes, but it has a feature called prism which bends the light going into one eye, fixing the double vision. Without it, I see double, which is incredibly annoying, and also makes it impossible to drive a car. So I’d better not lose those glasses.

It’s so bad, and so frustrating, that I’ve started seeing a visual therapist. My diagnosis is a turned eye – technically ‘esotropia,’ meaning the eye turns inward. My therapy consists of exercises to train my eyes on convergence and divergence (turning in and turning out), and also to work on my hand-eye and foot-eye coordination. My therapist wants to build new neural paths in my eye-brain system, and believes that working on my overall physical coordination is an important part of that.

So now our house has eye charts and patterns of shapes taped to the walls, and the family gets to watch me do fun, goofy exercises, and hear me reciting letters to the beat of a metronome. So far, I have noticed only a slight improvement; I seem to be able to fix my double vision at some distances, so long as I strain my eyes. But that’s still annoying, and my eyes are tired all the time, which I know is because I spend so much time looking at a computer screen, but that’s my work and my life, so what am I supposed to do?

I wake up with tired eyes, and can’t see straight, and stumble through my morning routine. When I need to find things, I have to strain my eyes, and turn my head, in an attempt to correct my double vision. It can make me quite cranky sometimes.

I’ve thought about how my double vision might relate to chakra health. Vision is connected to Ajna, the third-eye chakra, which is the seat of the intellect (the mind’s eye, as they say).

Maybe I see double because I can’t discern the future well. Two possible realities float in my visual field, but which one is the accurate image? What does it look like when it comes together? My vision reflects my mind’s confusion and uncertainty over the state of the world, in these uncertain times.

That could just be me overthinking things. Also not good for the third-eye chakra, I’m sure.

Apologies for the whiny post, but I am here to chronicle the changing times, which includes chronicling my own deterioration with age, as I already began to do years ago.