Hey guys, I’m not a story writer, but I really like to read stories about girls with glasses, especially about girl with plus glasses. So I decided to contribute, even though English is not my native language, so my text may sound weird for most of us in some places.
Since I simply can’t create a fictional story, I decided to provide translation from Russian to English of this diary of unknown girl https://lizzbet123.livejournal.com/ who forced herself to wear plus glasses. The diary provides a lot of details, so it is really believable that this is a true story. However, it is hard to tell, because this has happened in the pre-Instagram era, and no personal details were given. I tried to contact her (which I very rarely do) without any luck. Anyway, this story impressed me a lot back in the days.
I will post weekly, so be patient.
December 22nd, 2009
My First Blog Post
I always wanted to wear glasses! I don’t know why, but I am very intrigued by how my eyes would look behind the magnifying glasses. My lovely passed grandmother had reading glasses with thick magnifying lenses. So as a child I always wanted to try them on, but my parents never allowed me this. Maybe the desire to be a girl with big eyes behind the glasses is a memory of the forbidden fruit in my childhood ?!
Now I live alone far from my parents and from the beginning of this year, I will try to follow my plan to start wearing glasses. Here I will write notes about this.
December 22nd, 2009
The Plan
So what is the plan? I have to summarize my thoughts and write them down 
I know that glasses with the magnifying lenses are used when a person has hyperopia or presbyopia, i.e. two different reasons. Hyperopia is like myopia but the opposite. Btw all my friends who wear glasses are shortsighted in fact. A farsighted person always needs glasses. Presbyopia is just when your eyes are getting older and weaker. Presbyopia is when the glasses are needed for reading only.
What do I need? Hyperopia or Presbyopia? And how can a person with normal vision begin to wear glasses!? I tried to figure it out.
My mom has reading glasses, which are pretty strong by the way. Once I even tried them on when I was visiting her. Everything which is close up was magnified and very crisp. I actually don’t mind to use these glasses for reading or smartphone too as my mom does But when I looked into the distance, then everything is completely blurry.
What will happen if I’ll buy some reading glasses and will start to use them? Will my vision worsen? Will presbyopia come not at 45 like mom’s, but at 20? I searched for an answer for a long time, and finally, on a specialized form I read the following: with age, muscles that focus the lens of the eye become weak - therefore it is becoming difficult to focus close up. The reading glasses allow the muscles of the eye not to strain. Thus logically, yes, if I will start regularly use reading glasses, then eventually, my eye muscles will stop working and start to weaken. And I will have to wear glasses for seeing close up!
The question is though: I have never seen anyone at my age who uses reading glasses. And also at my work, there are several middle-aged employees, they always wear their reading glasses for paperwork and while using laptops. And if I also will do so, then I afraid almost everyone will ask something like: why do you wear these glasses, they are for elderly people, you are too young to wear reading glasses, etc. In short, it seems like this plan is not going to work.
Researching further, I read on that forum that there is “latent hyperopia.” That means that if you have weak farsightedness, then eye muscles will work much harder than they usually do, but as a result, they will give you some sort of build-in glasses. So a person can have latent hyperopia, but wouldn’t know until these muscles will become weak with age and eyesight will worsen suddenly, because these “build-in” glasses are stopped working anymore.
Maybe this is about me? It’s worth a try! It may not be possible for me to wear some cool glasses and have really bad eyesight. But maybe if I have this latent hyperopia, then I will wear at least my own glasses. Ah, my dreams!
So, the plan is to buy reading glasses to start with! Wear them at home. See how I get used to them.
Unfortunately, I will not use them at work, maybe this will reduce the effect and it will take a longer time to get used to them … But we’ll see
December 25th, 2009
My First Glasses
Wow! I just bought a reading glasses for myself!
Actually I have this problem that leads to a huge contradiction: I want to wear glasses, but I’m so shy about that. I really want to wear glasses, but at the same time, I’m very shy since I do not need them for my real vision.
Therefore, I can’t simply go to the optical store and pick up some glasses with a frame I like. I just can’t overcome myself! How can it be?
I recalled that there is a small store in the mall near my home, you can buy cheap jewelry, watches and glasses, both sunglasses and over-the-counter readers. So I went to this shop one evening after returning home from work. I showed a piece of paper with the text I wrote “+2.00 PD 61” to shop assistant and said that this is for my mom, as she broke hers and asked me to buy the new ones. This was my story, and it worked actually pretty well. I’ve got the glasses. Thats it!
Why did I decide to try +2.00 prescription first? My thoughts were as follows. I remember when my mom started using her reading glasses regularly, there was a label on it saying +2.00. So I quickly realized that this is a kind of the size of the glasses. I researched further, and although I was terrible in natural sciences in school, I read up that this number is a strength of the glasses which measures how do they magnify. Additionally, if you have +2.00 glasses on and read something at a distance of 50 centimeters, it turns out that your eye muscles are completely relaxed because the glasses provide all the focusing power. The number 61 is the distance between the pupils in millimeters, I measured it in front of the mirror. It seems like knowing this distance is very important when you buy glasses.
I took it with plastic lenses because they don’t break. I didn’t choose a frame, I just poked my finger at the first ones. But it seems OK. Here are glasses which look similar to mine
Well, what can I say? Of course, reading with these glasses is a real pleasure, all the letters are much larger and clearer! When using my computer it’s a little bit inconvenient - I had to move my screen closer. Because basically, you seat much further to the screen than these 50 centimeters… And of course it’s hard to see the distance with the glasses, everything in 2-3 meters and beyond is very blurry.
My eyes got used to reading with the glasses pretty quickly. I am typing this text now with my glasses on. Of course, even without glasses, I can read normally. But what is interesting is that when I take the glasses off, then in the first moment everything is blurry close-up, i.e. seems like my eye muscles are really relaxed when I have my glasses on!
When I walk around the apartment wearing glasses, everything around is blurry, but I still can navigate OK around. When I cook, then the stove can be seen quite well indeed. Also, it is very convenient to have glasses on when I eat, because everything in plate is crisp clear
In short, I decided that starting from now I will always wear my glasses at home! I get up in the morning and put them on right away while I’m getting ready to go to work. Also, it is still possible to apply makeup while wearing glasses, however, I still need more practice with this
January 15th, 2010 Reading Glasses to Contacts?
I spent my New Year holidays without wearing glasses, so I can’t write anything new. But now I came back to work and I can already share some of my thoughts.
Firstly, my eyes still work well for near tasks with and without my glasses. 
It’s even a shame somehow. I somehow thought that I would buy glasses, put them on, and eventually get used to them and in a couple of days or weeks I will have to wear them full time! But no, no miracle there.
Secondly, how can I get used to my glasses if I don’t wear them at work, and my eyes are kept very busy and strained all day long here? It worried me from the very beginning! I have to make my eyes more relaxed at work. But how to do this? I don’t want to wear reading glasses there. The only option left is contact lenses.
I thought to buy contact lenses +2.00, i.e. like my reading glasses. So I would go bare eyed to work and insert contact lenses only here in a restroom. But firstly, I really don’t know how to wear contact lenses yet, and especially how to insert them. And for the beginners, it’s better to do it at home. Additionally, my goal is to wear glasses all the time, so I should also try to wear lenses all the time. As a result, I decided to try to buy +1.00 lenses first and wear them everywhere: outside and at work. And at home, I’m going to switch back to my glasses.
Why exactly +1? Based on the fact that I quite learned how to get around at home with my +2 glasses, I decided that with +1 it would not be so scary to leave the house, even if the distance would be a little bit blurry. I don’t drive, so I would tolerate some blurriness no problem, and then see how it would go. Anyway, with +1 the blurriness should not be so bad as with +2. So this plan should work!
January 20th, 2010 My First Contacts!
Buying contact lenses seems pretty easy! Easier than glasses in my situation: no need to go and try various frames, you can make an order completely online from the online store. But from the very beginning difficulties began. Firstly, contact lenses have a radius of curvature, but I don’t know which one I need, one can’t just measure it with a ruler at home. Secondly, as I said, many people don’t wear glasses or lenses while having low farsightedness (up to +2). Therefore, in practice, the +1 lenses I want, although they are listed in online stores, in fact, they may not be available because no one is buying them. It also seemed to me that plus contact lenses are generally more difficult to buy than minus lenses (
I placed an order in one online store, a sales manager called me back pretty quickly and said that the lenses I had selected are not available. Then she asked a strange question: are you sure that you did not mix up + and -, maybe you need -1? Then I started my story again. I said that this is for my mother, she is farsighted, she always buys her lens in optics, but now she’s very busy and blah blah blah 
In short, it turned out that they don’t have any plus lenses in stock, they have to make an order from a remote warehouse, and I need to wait a long time 
Then I tried to order from another online store. But it turned out quite strange somehow too: the status of the order the next day changed to “accepted”, and then silence. I wrote them a letter, but it also remained unanswered
But then finally a luck: after ordering from the third online store, they called me back next day and confirmed that my lenses will be shipped tomorrow!
I bought them with the radius of curvature that they have in stock (8.6) and the brand is Soflens Comfort 59. I thought that the description of these lenses is very suitable for those who have never worn contact lenses before
In addition to lenses, I also need a cleaning solution and a container. I bought Renu Multiplus solution at the nearest pharmacy. As I understand different cleaning solutions are not much different. I was surprised to find that there was no need to buy a container, it was already in a box with a bottle of solution!
Now about how to put them on. Of course, it is quite difficult right away. There are a lot of instructions and videos online about how to put on and take off lenses. I watched a video on Youtube. It immediately turned out that the lenses I bought are very thin. When I put the lens on my finger, it immediately straightens and sticks to the finger almost entirely. It was possible to solve this issue by making sure that no liquid remains on a lens. Then about how to put it on. Firstly, it is very difficult to do this when you have nails. Secondly, purely psychologically, I just can’t put a thing in my eye. I was afraid to even touch my eye! But it turned out there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not painful, and if wash my hands, then it’s okay to touch my eyeball, nothing scary happened.
In short, after almost 20 minutes of fighting in front of the mirror, my contact lenses were in! Victory! By the way, the curvature of 8.6 really fits, the lenses just lie on the eye surface and hold well.
First impressions were very unusual. Feels like as I put on my reading glasses. Damn, how cool it is! Now I can have my ‘reading glasses’ at work, and I don’t need to wear them, lol. They are right in my eyes! Everything in the distance is just blurry. I can’t even believe that these are just +1, it seems that they are as my +2 glasses! I even immediately thought that I bought the wrong strength. Or maybe contact lenses are designated so that, for example, +1 lenses are stronger than +1 glasses … By the way, I noticed that when I was putting my lenses in and standing close to the mirror, my eyes were strained a little. The next time I decided that I will try to put my lens in, while I’m still wearing my glasses. I wonder how farsighted people put in and take out their lenses. Also with glasses on?
Then I spent a couple of hours in the lenses at home. To get used to it. Reading and looking close was very nice and fun. If I look into the distance, everything is still blurry, although the blurriness was noticeable at the distances greater than with my regular +2 glasses. I definitely can see more or less clear not so distant objects. So the lenses are indeed weaker than my glasses!
I’ll wear my lenses for work tomorrow, and I will bring a lens container with me just in case if something will happen there and lens will need to be removed.
https://vision-and-spex.com/dairy-of-a-girl-who-became-plus-glasses-wearer-t1524.html