The blind leading the newly divorced

I took a vacation day yesterday b/c I realized on Monday that I actually have accrued 4 days that I must use up by the end of June. Decided to go to Pearle Vision to get the hard gas permeable lenses replaced; the ones that I have to pull out of my eye at least twice a day because they seem to attract little bits of sawdust constantly. In fact, I've been wearing two old lenses having lost the two newer ones--one is forever in the Coffee Bean and the other disappeared in my bathroom.

I'd gone to Will's Eye Hospital on Wednesday and was there for over two hours. Since they're a hospital and can get tons of insurance benefits, they try to do every possible test on your eyeballs. Also, they had one younger guy give me the exam and then the head doctor came in and gave me the exact same exam (though truncated). They dilated my eyes which was really not necessary and caused me to walk around blinded for half the day, sheilding my eyes in the sun like Vampira. They also wanted to take some weird photograph of my one eye just to be sure it wasn't about to explode, but I told them I had to get to work (who stays at the eye doctor for three hours?) The head doctor suggested I see a retina specialist because I'm very nearsighted. I was like, yeah, sure, I'll go see that person for another five hours and then s/he will tell me I'm nearsighted too and you can charge my insurance $500. At the very end, he said he couldn't give me prescrptiton for glasses (or contacts) because he'd need for me to wear my old glasses for two weeks so my eyes can stretch back to their normal size or something. And then I could come back and maybe they could dilate my eyes again, shine blinding lights at my pupils, have a picture taken of the irises, pop one eye ball out and examine it under a special high powered microscope that only NASA has and then change the color to a sharper green. And how about lasic surgery? I said, Oh, mmhmm. No way am I going to wear my Coke bottle, poor handicapped girl glasses for two weeks or return to Will's. Strangers on the street offer me spare change when I wear my glasses in public and ask me if I shouldn't be wearing my special helmet.

All of which is to say I went to the mall for my eye exam. The doctor was a short, youngish man with a gold chain. He looked at my chart and said, Wow, I never would've guessed you're that age. You look at least ten years younger. I said, You should see my mom. She looks every younger than I do. He asked me about my job. I told him and said something about how I wanted soft contact lenses b/c my boyfriend was always yelling at me for taking mine out in the middle of the sidewalk. He said, Oh, you have a boyfriend? How long have you been dating? I said, Nearly two years. He said, Wow! Are you planning on getting married? I said, I don't know. He said, Are you in love? Have you ever been in love before? He then confessed that he'd just recently been divorced, just five months before. I said, Wow, that's soon. (I don't know why I used the word "soon"). He said that she and he had been dating other people and you know, it was okay, but he just didn't know if he would ever fall in love again. I nodded. I had taken out my contacts and so was basically just staring at the fuzzy blur of his head, hoping I was making eye contact and not staring fixedly at his forehead. I cannot see at all without my contacts. He could've had his penis hanging out of his fly and I wouldn't have known it. He said, Do you feel like there's something missing in your relationship? I said, Wow, I feel like I'm at the psychiatrist. He said, I'm sorry, it's just that when you have been with someone for seven years and then it doesn't work out, you're a little leery of marriage. He told me about how they met, when they got married, and then how it just ended. I was afraid he might cry and then what would I do? Instead, he stopped talking about himself and said, Okay, but your chin on this thing, and he finished the exam, gave me my new soft lenses, and told me to come back in two weeks.

I've had a slight headache ever since; I'm not sure if these lenses are working.