Since I learned how to write I have kept a dairy of my life so I can go back and read about that happened to me and when they happened throughout my life. My name is Hailey Rodriguez, and I am the youngest daughter of Juan and Muriel Rodriguez. I have a brother Jose, who is 2 years older than I am as well as a sister Paulina, who is 4 years older than I am. I was born in 1990, and by the time I was 3 years old, from what my mom has told me, my parents knew that there was definitely something wrong with my eyesight. My mom took me to the hospital to see an eye doctor, and I was prescribed my first of many pairs of glasses. These glasses changed my life. For the first time in my life I could see things clearly that were further away than the tip of my nose. Apparently I was so terribly nearsighted that no glasses could give me vision that was anything like what other people considered normal. Even though my glasses gave me a distorted and minified view of the world around me, once my brain got used to being able to decipher what I was seeing through the strong lenses at least I could see well enough to function. At the time I had no idea that other people could see a whole lot better than I could though.
When I was a child I would sometimes ask my mom why I needed to wear glasses, but mom couldn’t tell me anything other than that the doctor had told her I had likely been born with congenital high myopia, and I would have to wear very powerful glasses for the rest of my life. When I started kindergarten at the age of 5 I was the only child in my class that wore glasses. It wasn’t until I was in third grade that there was anyone else in my class that wore glasses, and the other little girl had glasses that magnified her eyes behind her lenses, instead of making them very tiny like my glasses did.
By the time I reached Junior High I hated my glasses. Lots of kids teased me about having to wear binoculars to see, and I guess my thick lenses with the circles in the middle did look a little like I had a pair of binoculars on my face. I hated the teasing, and I was afraid of some of the kids who seemed to want to grab my glasses from my face. I really didn’t have any friends, because my thick glasses made me look so different. My thick and strange looking glasses singled me out as an outsider. As much as I wanted to fit in and be friends with other kids I was shunned by most of them. There were a couple of other girls that were friendly towards me, but they were also girls who were not well accepted by the attractive crowd. However, as friends they were better than not having any.
My eyesight was so poor I always had to sit right at the front of the classroom, and even then I sometimes had trouble deciphering what the teacher had written on the board. My grades were not very good, although I always managed to get a pass in all my subjects. I did like to read, and I read a lot, but I suppose that this was not very good for my eyes because in order to see the words clearly I had to bring my books to a distance of about 10” or less away from my glasses. I liked it a lot better when I could find large print books at the library because that meant I could hold my book a bit further away and it was easier to read.
Most of the other girls had boyfriends by the time they were 14. I didn’t. And none of the boys at school would even talk to me because I think they were afraid that if they were nice to me they would be teased by the other guys about me being their girlfriend. This hurt me a lot. I didn’t have much self-confidence as it was. It also didn’t help that I was a little on the plus side. I wasn’t really what would be considered fat, but I was certainly not thin. My rear end was a bit broader than it should be, and as hard as I tried I didn’t seem to be able to lose any weight from my butt. I had substantial breasts, and my legs looked nice and shapely. I often wished I could see my face without glasses, because whenever I took my glasses off people would tell me I was quite attractive. I couldn’t see that though because without my glasses my face in a mirror was just a huge blur, and when I had my glasses on all I could see was my thick glasses blocking my face.
When I was 16 two things happened. A boy asked me out on a date, and I got a part time job as an assistant cook in a restaurant. The man who owned the restaurant was a friend of my dad’s, so that is why I got the job, but I didn’t care. I was going to be able to earn some money and buy myself contact lenses. And the boy who asked me out was Manuel Suarez. He was a friend of my brother Jose.
It was certainly a good feeling to not be sitting at home by myself on a Saturday night. I suppose if I had dated other guys I would have realized that Manuel was not that nice a person. He often made unkind remarks to me about how blind I was, especially after we had gone to a movie and I had made him sit much closer to the front than he wanted to sit. I wanted to have a boyfriend so badly that I put up with Manny and his verbal abuse. After all, he never hit me.
I saved up my money from working at the restaurant, and when I thought I had enough I went to see my eye doctor to see if I could get contact lenses. I was rather upset though when my eye doctor told me that contact lenses would not work for me, because I had a little bit of base out prism in my lenses and contact lenses could not correct that. He did suggest that I could have part of my prescription corrected with contact lenses and the balance of my prescription could then be done with glasses. I thought about that for a while, but I figured that since the end result would be that I still had to wear glasses I might just as well stick with glasses and save the money that the contacts would have cost me.
Manny was one of those people who didn’t have a clue about vision and how glasses didn’t always correct a person’s visual defects. After the third or fourth time of him asking me why I didn’t just get stronger glasses if I couldn’t see things clearly I gave up trying to explain to him that the glasses I was wearing actually gave me the best possible correction that I could get. He wasn’t alone in his thinking this way, because even at school my teachers would often suggest to my mom that I needed new glasses. My prescription had not changed very much since I got my first pair of glasses. My optical center for my lenses had shifted from the 58mm that it had been at age 3 to the 64mm that it was now, but my spherical and my cylinder had only required minor adjustments over the years.
Once I finished grade 12, when I was about halfway between my 17th and my 18th birthday, I quit school. I knew I was severely visually handicapped, and it would not be a good investment for my parents to borrow the money to attempt to send me to university. I actually was enjoying my job as a cook in a restaurant, and the job was not as taxing on my poor eyesight as many other jobs might be. Johnny, dad’s friend who owned the restaurant, was giving me as many hours as he could, but I was still only working about half time. Johnny talked to me one day about me possibly going to work for a friend of his who owned a restaurant that was about a half hour bus ride away. I agreed to go to see his friend for an interview, and I rode the bus to the other restaurant. Johnny’s friend was a very nice man who did not say a word about my chunky looking thick lensed myodiscs and at the end of the interview he told me I had the job. I did tell him that I was visually impaired and that sometimes it took me longer to read something than it would take a normally sighted person and he thanked me for telling him that. But he felt that if I could do a good job for Johnny, I would do just as good a job for him.
Sometimes after work Manny would come by to pick me up. I often had to struggle with Manny to try to make him realize that I was not willing to sleep with him unless we were married. Finally, after I had been working for Sam at “The City Grill” for a few months I had to tell Manny that enough was enough. I was not willing to go out with him any longer. When I told him that I think he was going to hit me, but then he realized that if he did I would tell my brother Jose, and Jose was a lot bigger man than Manny was. I think Jose would have hurt Manny big time if he had hurt me.
My family was a real mixed bag. Rodriguez is definitely a Hispanic name, but my dad was mixed White and Hispanic. My mom was mixed Native American and African American, so my heritage was a real can of worms. My sister and I had dark curly hair when we were younger, but now we both had long straight black hair, as did my brother. We all had brown eyes, and fairly dark skin and I know my brother was considered to be quite handsome. My sister had married when she turned 21, and she was, like me, a little heavier in the rear end than she should have been, but it didn’t seem to bother her husband, as Paulina was already in her 6th month of pregnancy. No one in either my mom’s family, or my dad’s family had bad eyes like I had, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I looked just like my brother and sister people might have concluded I was adopted.
Every morning I walked to the bus stop at the end of our street and got on the bus heading downtown so I could go to work at the City Café. I started at 6 and the bus ride was about 30 minutes, so I made sure I caught the 5:15 bus to get me to work on time. I prided myself on the fact that I could be counted on to always be there, and even when I walked in the door almost 15 minutes early I made sure I put a couple of pots of coffee on and heated up the grill before the first customer came in for their breakfast. It was a good job – at least for me anyway. I cooked standing in front of the pass through window and even though my eyesight wasn’t really good enough to see them clearly enough to make out their features, I could be easily seen by any of the regular customers that sat at the counter. The customers were friendly, and even when some of them teased me a little about my thick glasses it never seemed to me that they were being hurtful with their teasing. If anyone did step over the line with a comment Sam would immediately cut them off by telling them that they were going too far. I enjoyed going to work and I really liked my job. Sure, I was visually handicapped, but I didn’t really feel like it when I was working.
It had hurt when I had to tell Manny to take a hike. But I felt that this was the smartest thing for me to do, because it would never have worked out between us. He really had no empathy for my poor eyesight and I am sure that if I had married him it wouldn’t have taken long before I got a backhand or two. But not having a boyfriend sure lowered my self-confidence even more. On a scale of 1 to 10 with one being the lowest and ten the highest my self-confidence was about a -2.
I always worked until 2 pm 6 days a week. Then I would catch the 2:15 bus that took me towards home. After a 30 minute ride I would then get off and walk the last 2 blocks to the house and I would then watch a couple of soaps with my mom before we made supper for dad. One Thursday afternoon I was standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus and a fairly good looking guy walked up to the stop and stood there waiting with me. He let me get on first and I showed my bus pass to the driver. He had to put a token in the fare box, and then he walked back to where I was seated. He asked if I minded if he sat down with me and I think I managed to stammer that if he wanted to sit there he could.
He made casual conversation about the weather and he asked me what I did, even though I was positive that the smells from the kitchen had followed me. I know he looked at my ring finger because he commented that it appeared as if I might be single. When I got to my stop and got off I almost cried. Here was a good looking guy that had shown a little bit of interest in me and I had not even been able to carry on a sensible conversation with him. All I had been able to do was mumble the answer to his questions. And now I would never see him again.
The next evening after work I walked to the bus stop again. I wished with all my might that he would be there waiting for the bus, but of course he wasn’t. The bus pulled up and stopped, and I was getting on when I felt the presence of someone behind me breathing heavily as if they had just run for the bus. I showed my pass and headed for an empty seat, of which there were a lot. As I turned around and sat down my heart started to pitter pat. He was there. He was walking towards me, and he asked if I wanted some company. He sat down and immediately started to talk.
“Hi, I was hoping I would see you again today. My name is Cooper, but all my friends call me Coop.” Coop said.
“So should I call you Cooper, or should I call you Coop?” I managed to ask without stammering like a blubbering idiot.
“Oh, you can definitely call me Coop.” Coop said.
‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance Coop. My name is Hailey, Hailey Rodriguez.”
“Hailey, that is a nice name, and it suits you very well. You are a pretty lady Hailey.” Coop told me.
“I think you are lying to me Coop. I can’t see very well, even with these thick glasses, and I am a little overweight. But I can see no reason why you would lie.” I replied.
“You can think what you want Hailey. Although your glasses appear to be fairly strong, even with your glasses on I can tell that you are a very attractive young lady. And maybe you might think you are a little heavy, but maybe I find that quite acceptable. I have no reason to sell you a bill of goods, but I will honestly tell you that I would take you out on a date if you were available to go out with me.” Coop said.
“I am available Coop.” I replied.
“How be we go to a movie tonight then?” Coop asked.
“We would have to go to the early show, because I have to be up for work by 4:30 in the morning. And you might not like sitting as close to the screen as I have to sit.” I replied.
“I think the early show is at 6:15. And I will let you choose where you need to sit to see properly.” Coop told me.
I gave Coop my address and my cell phone number. My head was spinning. Here was this good looking guy who actually wanted to take me to a movie. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my mom.
About 4 pm Coop called me to tell me that he had borrowed a car and he would pick me up at 5:30 if that was all right with me. I told him that 5:30 would be fine, and I went on getting ready. I wanted to look my best for Coop, but I was worried that my best wouldn’t be good enough.
I guess I needn’t have worried. I opened the door for Coop at exactly 5:30, and he took one look at me and exclaimed “Hailey, you look fabulous.” He gave me half a dozen red roses, which I put into a vase, and we headed off to see the movie. When we got to the theater and went inside I turned towards the seats in the front, but I stopped after I went down 3 or 4 rows.
“Is this too close for you Coop?” I asked.
“I can handle it Hailey. But I don’t think this is really close enough for you is it?” Coop said.
“I should probably be a little closer.” I replied.
I moved up until I was so close to the front that I was afraid Coop was going to say something. But he just slid in beside me. As we watched the movie Coop held my hand in his, but he didn’t make any further moves on me. My heart was pounding. I had never ever thought that such a good looking man would ever ask me out. When the movie was over Coop escorted me to the car, and he opened my door for me. Manny would never have done that.
“I am sorry we had to sit so close Coop. It must have been hard for you.” I said as we headed towards my house.
“Don’t apologize Hailey. I knew what I was getting myself in for when I suggested we could go to a show tonight. You can’t help your poor eyesight.” Coop said.
Oh, my goodness. A fabulous looking man who understood my problems. This was too good to be true. But it wasn’t. Coop asked me out the following night as well. He planned to take me to dinner and then we were going dancing. When he showed up Saturday night to pick me up he came in and met my dad and my mom. I was willing to bet that after we left for our date they must have spent the rest of the night discussing how it was possible that their half blind daughter had managed to find such a good looking gentleman who was willing to take her out.
Over the next few weeks Coop often met me at the restaurant just as I was getting off work. Sometimes he had a car, and would drive me home, but most of the time he and I would ride the bus. One night we were in the car, and Coop asked me if I wanted to come home with him to meet his parents. I agreed, but I was scared beyond belief that they would take one look at me and my thick myodiscs and decide that I was not worthy of their son.
Apparently I needn’t have worried. Coop’s mom and dad were as nice to me as Coop was. They did ask me some personal questions about my eyesight, and I answered them as honestly as I could. I did tell them that there was no past history of myopia in my family, and that the doctors felt that I would not pass on my congenital high myopia to any children I might have and that seemed to make them feel a little better. I sort of gathered that Coop had been preparing them that he might ask me to marry him in the near future, and that surprised the heck out of me. I most certainly wouldn’t have minded Coop asking me to marry him, but I definitely was not expecting that at this early a stage of our dating.
We stayed for supper, and after supper Coop drove me to my house. I had gathered that Coop’s parents had a fairly decent bank account, because they had a really nice home in a good neighborhood and there didn’t seem to be any shortage of cars in the garage. Coop had a sister, but she was away at college, and Coop was taking a course in computer engineering at the university nearby.
Once I knew where Coop’s parents lived I realized that the bus I rode home on was a logical choice for Coop to take to get home. But the university was not anywhere near the restaurant where I worked. I am not a really smart person, but I was able to figure out that Coop had to have a reason to have been near my restaurant. As hard as I tried though I couldn’t come up with a reason. It was bothering me a lot, and finally I came right out and asked Coop.
“My classmate Jason lives in the general vicinity of the restaurant, and one day Jason and I went in there for lunch. I saw you working behind the pass through to the kitchen, and I liked what I saw. We went back to Jason’s place after we ate, but I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I was driving that day and as I was on my way home I saw you walking towards the bus stop.” Coop told me.
“And then you came back the next day and met me at the bus stop?” I asked.
“No, I thought about you for a few days. But I figured a girl as attractive looking as you were had to be either married or had a boyfriend so I wasn’t going to come back. But after a week of thinking about you I just had to come back. That was when I met you at the bus stop.” Coop replied.
“Honestly Coop, do you really think I am cute?” I asked.
“If I wasn’t so attracted to you I would not be here with you right now. Certainly I think you are attractive.” Coop responded.
“But my glasses are so thick, and I don’t see very well even when I am wearing them. How can you think I am cute?” I queried.
“Glasses are superficial. Yes, you need them badly, and yes, even when you are wearing them your eyesight is not all that great. But your glasses do not make you as a person. I am falling in love with Hailey as a person, not Hailey as a glasses wearer.” Coop said.
I wanted to believe Coop so badly that it made my heart ache. Was he telling me the truth, or was he feeding me a line. But he had never tried to make a move on me. Was there something wrong with him? Or was there something wrong with me that he wasn’t telling me about? I really wanted to believe him in the worst way, but years of rejection and bullying left me a bit skeptical.
I think Coop realized I was a little reluctant to bare myself to him. But he was still every bit as nice to me as he had always been, and gradually I started to believe in him. Before I could believe in him I also had to first start to believe in myself, and that was really hard to do. He continued to court me as a true gentleman would. We went to my sister and her husband’s place to see her new baby and to have supper one night, and after supper when I was helping Paulina clean up and do the dishes she whispered to me that I would be a fool to let this guy get away. She basically told me that I needed to do anything I could to keep him hooked. I sort of knew that myself, but I didn’t know what the next step should be. Should I have sex with Coop? He had not even mentioned it to me, and I didn’t want to suggest it to him first. After all I was still a virgin.
Coop and I had been going out together for about 6 months when I invited him to my parents place for Sunday dinner. Mom often had me help her out in the kitchen, and I was doing just that while Coop and daddy sat in the other room talking. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I found out soon after dinner. Mom and I cleaned up the dishes, and then she and dad went out for a walk while Coop and I sat in the living room talking. Coop got up, reached in his pocket and brought out a little blue jewelry box. He then got down on one knee in front of me and asked me to marry him as he flipped open the box. He took out this gorgeous diamond ring in a white gold setting, and he slipped it onto my finger. I couldn’t believe it. This was beyond my wildest dreams.
The ring was just fabulous, and I couldn’t stop staring at it. Of course I said yes, as I would have been a complete idiot not to. Mom and dad came back from their walk and I showed them the ring. They congratulated the two of us on our decision, and that is when dad told me that Coop had asked his permission to marry me when they were talking before dinner.
Coop didn’t want a long engagement, and really, neither did I. We decided that we would set the wedding date soon after my 19th birthday. I was only going to invite close family members and maybe a couple of the girlfriends that had been nice to me during my school years. Coop had a few more friends that he wanted to invite along with his family, and when he asked me if I had anyone in mind to be my maid of honor I had to tell him that the only person I could think of was my sister Paulina.
“My sister Michelle volunteered when I told her you didn’t have very many friends.” Coop told me.
“But I have never met her. Why would she agree to do that for someone she doesn’t even know?” I asked.
“Because she loves her baby brother, and she knows I love you.” Coop replied.
“Have you got a best man in mind?’ I asked.
“Yes, I do, but I was also thinking of asking your brother Jose if he would be an usher.” Coop said.
We compromised and ended up with Jose as the one usher and Michelle as the one bridesmaid with Coop’s friend Dave and my sister Paulina as the best man and the maid of honor. The wedding guests were kept to a maximum of 50, and we ended up being able to fit everyone in the back room at Sammy’s restaurant. Sammy was so pleased that I was getting married that he offered us the use of his banquet room as a wedding gift, and we gratefully accepted.
A month before the wedding date Coop suggested that I should see my eye doctor and get a new pair of glasses for the wedding. I protested, but finally Coop wore me down and we went to see my eye doctor, who pronounced my existing prescription as being still quite acceptable and suggested that for the wedding I might like to try a pair of glasses with the highest index glass lenses that were presently available. We chose a new frame, and the doctor’s assistant sent the frame off to have the lenses inserted into it. I was surprised to find that Coop had booked an eye appointment for himself, and I was also wondering what the heck was going on, because it seemed to take a lot longer for the doctor to examine Coop’s eyes than it had taken for my own. But when I asked Coop what had taken so long Coop simply told me that the doctor had given him a very thorough examination, and I accepted that answer.
It took 3 weeks for my glasses to come in, and when I picked them up I was very happy with them. When the doctor checked my vision he told me that with these new glasses I could see the 20/70 line, and that was much better than the 20/80 line that was the best I could do with my old glasses. The new glasses were a bit heavier to wear, and now I really noticed the difference in my vision if they dropped a little bit on my nose, so I tried to keep them pushed up at all times.
The week leading up to the wedding was just a crazy week. I still was heading off to work to be at Sammy’s at 5:45, and after I was finished in the afternoon mom and I were filling in all the blanks so that hopefully everything would go off without a snag. Sammy still opened the restaurant on the Saturday morning of my wedding, but he closed at noon. Obviously I wasn’t cooking that morning. And it was rather unusual for Sammy to lock the doors early, but he and his wife both wanted to be at my wedding.
Everything went like clockwork. The preacher was great, and the photographer didn’t keep everyone waiting for more and more shots. Once photography went digital wedding photographers all seemed to go crazy with their requests for more and more pictures. And I suppose the more shots they took the nicer the pictures would be, but you do reach a point where everyone has had enough. The dinner meal was fantastic and I felt that Sammy and the others had gone above and beyond for Coop and I. For the dance we only had a disc jockey, but he was interesting and played a lot of songs that everyone could dance to. By the end of the evening, when it was time for Coop and I to leave, I felt that this was the most perfect wedding that I could have ever wished for.
Coop and I hadn’t wanted to go anywhere for our honeymoon. We felt that we would rather save the money, and spend our time setting up our new 2 bedroom condominium. Coop had shown me this condominium that his dad was going to buy for us and once Coop graduated we could start making payments. I had saved about $10,000.00 since I started working full time over a year ago and, while Coop didn’t want to use my money I finally forced him to give half of my savings to his dad as a down payment on the condo. We spent some of the rest of the money on new furnishings for the condo.
We had been living in the condo for almost a month. Coop was doing a lot of studying, because he felt it was very important to graduate with good grades in all of his courses, so our usual evening was one in which I either watched television, or read a book, and Coop holed himself up in the other room with his university reading material. That night after supper Coop announced that he felt it was about time to show me something that he hoped would be of interest me. He then headed to our bedroom, grabbed a package from one of his dresser drawers and then went into the washroom.
A few minutes later he came out of the bathroom. I couldn’t see him very well at this distance, but as he drew closer I could see that he was wearing a pair of glasses. He came even closer, and I gasped. Now I could tell that the glasses he had on were strong, really, really strong. They looked to be even stronger than mine were, and that is saying something.
“What is going on here? You don’t wear glasses and how can you possibly see through such powerful lenses?” I asked.
“When we went to see your eye doctor a few weeks ago I had been to see him a few days earlier and I asked him if he could fix me up so that I could wear a pair of glasses that would give me close to the same vision that you had with your glasses. The day that you had your eye exam he examined my eyes as well, however I was wearing a pair of +30D contact lenses that he had just gotten in for me when he did the eye exam. Then he ordered me this pair of glasses that I could wear over the contact lenses. He feels that with this combination of minus glasses worn over the plus contact lenses it should give me fairly close to the same vision with glasses as you have.” Coop said.
“Come closer and let me see them better. Can you really see when you are wearing them?” I asked.
“Yes, I can. They make me a little dizzy and disorientated right now, but after I have some experience wearing them I should lose that feeling. He told me that I should start with a much weaker prescription and then work my way up to this extremely high prescription in stages, but I didn’t want to waste the time, or the money, and finally he agreed to order me the +30D contact lenses.” Coop told me.
“What are you trying to prove? Or should I ask you what you are really doing?” I asked.
“I just want to see the world the same way you see it. I thought this would help me understand the limitations of your vision.” Coop replied.
There wasn’t much more I could say. It seemed that Coop was determined to wear his glasses over contacts combination, no matter what my objections were. I suppose I should have been flattered that he loved me so much that he was willing to do this for me. I did ask him if I could try his new glasses on, and I was surprised to discover that I could not see through the lenses. They were much stronger than my own glasses were. I asked Coop about that, and he explained to me that in order to mimic my vision as best as possible he had to wear much stronger contact lenses and even stronger glasses than me, because the high powered plus contacts magnified everything a bit. Then the stronger glasses minified the objects significantly so that now what Coop saw was very similar in size to what I saw.
It started off with Coop putting in his contacts and wearing his glasses all evening around the condo after he returned from his classes. I remember that one or two times he came in from university and he was already wearing his combination. I did ask him once if he had worn his glasses to his lectures that day, and he told me that he had. I also asked him what his classmates and friends thought about him wearing strong glasses, and his reply was that if anyone asked he just told them his contacts had been bothering him and he had to wear his glasses.
Coop graduated that spring. He was already writing software for a number of companies, and he decided that he would be a free agent and work from home. He developed some apps that he sold, and he had a few video games in the testing stages. As well, he was writing code for a number of companies who needed people who could do this sort of work, but just didn’t have enough full time work to put a software engineer on the payroll. Now when I came home from Sammy’s in the afternoon Coop seemed to always be wearing his glasses.
I told Sammy I would continue cooking for him as long as I possibly could, but I did tell him that Coop and I were trying to have a baby soon. Coop was a tiger in bed, and he seemed to be even more sexually aroused when he and I were both wearing our glasses. I often had asked Coop to let me leave my glasses on when we made love in the daytime, because I really needed them to be able to see anything. Now Coop also left his on all the time.
We had been married about 2 years before I became pregnant. I tried to remember the last time I had seen Coop go around without glasses, and to tell you the truth I could no longer remember him not wearing glasses. One day I asked him why he never took his glasses off and his contact lenses out.
“Coop, how come you never take your contacts out and go around without glasses anymore? Isn’t it harmful for your eyes to wear contacts so much?” I asked.
“I go in to see your eye doctor at least once every 3 months for a checkup. So far he tells me that my eyes are doing just fine wearing the contact lenses. And to tell you the truth, whenever I have tried to take my lenses out and go around without glasses I can only last for a few minutes before I get the most intense headache in the world. As soon as I put the contacts back in and the glasses on again my headache goes away. I did ask the doctor about that, and he told me that my brain has gotten so used to the vision I get with my combination that when it tries to adapt to my normal eyesight it just can’t do it anymore.” Coop told me.
“So are you telling me that you will always have to wear your glasses?” I asked.
“I suppose if I was willing to put up with the intense headache for a day or two my eyes might revert back. But the doctor had to either increase the prescription in my glasses at my last visit, or else drop my contact lens prescription by +5D down to +25D.” Coop replied.
“What does that mean?” I questioned.
“He feels that I have developed about -5D of myopia on my own.” Coop said.
“I don’t think you got new glasses so I guess that you lowered the prescription of your contacts then.” I replied.
“Actually I did order new, stronger glasses. They just haven’t come in yet, so for the last three weeks I have been struggling to see things, and have been shoving my glasses right tight to the bridge of my nose.” Coop said.
“Coop, you are retarded. You are going to ruin your eyes and then you will be forced to wear really thick glasses just like me.” I answered.
“Would you not love me anymore if I had eyes that were just as bad as yours?” Coop asked.
“Of course I would still love you. You have always loved me and never once made me feel like less of a person because my eyesight was so bad. But you are doing this to yourself.” I said.
“Well, don’t worry too much honey. The doctor days that it is highly unlikely that my own eyesight will get any worse. Most people develop their myopia between the ages of 12 and 18, and by 22 or 23 the progression stops. I am already past the point where I will have much more progression.” Coop answered.
I couldn’t say too much more about this. After all Coop was making tons of money now, and it was his own eyesight he was messing with. I was looking forward to seeing what his new glasses looked like, and when he came in one afternoon wearing them I asked him if I could examine them closely. He took them off and put his old glasses back on while I looked carefully at his new glasses. Mine are what they call biconcave myodiscs. There is some of the power in the front of the lens, because the front is dished in. But most of the power that I need is in the rear of the lens, and the rear is done with a bit of a plus carrier with the power of the lens ground into the middle of it. Because Coop’s glasses are stronger than mine he needs what are generally called double concave, or biconcave myodiscs. There is quite a bit more power ground into the front of the lens, and then a lot more of the power is in the rear of the lens. The front part of his lens had about a 25 or so mm button, and the rear part had about a 22 mm button. Apparently the front button needs to be a little larger than the rear because if the front is smaller the wearer loses their focus every time they let their eyes stray outside of the interior button because their eyes stray into a weaker portion of the lens. I didn’t really understand this, and I wasn’t all that interested. I just hoped my eyes would never reach a point where I needed double concave myodiscs, but since my eyes had barely changed since I was 3 years old I figured I was safe.
About 7 months later Coop and I became proud parents of a beautiful baby boy. My choice of a name for him was Kyle, but Coop wanted to name him Justin. We ended up naming him Justin Kyle, because it sounded better with Coops family name. I had quit working at Sammy’s about a month before Justin was born, and as I was around the condo all day I could see that Coop was acting just like a really high myope would act. He had his large computer screen in front of him, and the text was bigger than normal. Whenever he had to read anything he brought his reading material very close to his face, almost closer than I did. Coop had given up driving soon after he had started wearing his glasses over his contacts, and to tell you the truth, if his eyesight was really as bad as mine was I couldn’t even imagine getting into a car with him. But we had a very good transit system in the city, so we had no problem getting to anywhere we wanted to go.
After the baby was born Coop and I discussed the purchase of a larger place. I had thrown another few thousand of the money I had been making into the pot to help pay off Coop’s father for the mortgage, and Coop had also been making some pretty good payments to whittle it down. With our past payment record being very good, we asked Coop’s dad if he was willing to hold a mortgage on a larger place, and while he said he would, he suggested that with our equity now we should be able to get a conventional mortgage. Coop and I applied at the bank, and we were approved.
Coop’s parents and my parents had seen Coop wearing his glasses now for about 3 years. They had accepted his explanation as to why he was doing this, but I don’t think they realized just how much Coop was wearing his strong glasses combination. I knew that he no longer went any more than a few waking minutes without his contacts in and his glasses on. He would stumble to the bathroom in the morning and put his contacts in, and at night he would take his contacts out and come to bed in the dark. I suppose he would sometimes go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I would be willing to bet that he would barely open his eyes to do that. I was a little worried about what he was possibly doing to himself, but nothing I said seemed to sink in.
Justin was a little over a year old when I became pregnant again. By the time the baby was born Coop and I had been married for over 4 years, but it certainly didn’t seem that long. This time I gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby girl that we named Leah, after my grandmother.
By the time Leah was a year old we had already taken Justin to see my eye doctor. Fortunately Justin had not inherited my congenital myopia and now we were waiting patiently to see if Leah showed any signs of being nearsighted. My doctor had told me that if my myopia had been caught before I was 2 years old, and I had then gotten glasses to correct it I would have had much better visual acuity now. That is why we were being very careful with our children. I was hoping that Leah would escape being myopic, because she did seem to be able to see everything quite well.
It was very close to our 5th anniversary when one of Coop’s eyes became all red and inflamed. He could not wear his contact lens in that eye, and he was in agony. He needed to go see our eye doctor, and I called and made an emergency appointment for him. I was surprised. Instead of Coop going to the doctor without his contacts he put the contact in the eye without the redness, and then he put an eye patch over the other eye before he put his glasses on. I had to help Coop to the doctors for his appointment and fortunately I had been able to get my mother to come and look after the kids while we were gone
Coop had a case of pink eye. Pink eye is generally called conjunctivitis and can be caused by allergies, by exposure to bacteria or can be the result of a viral infection. In Coop’s case he had likely caught it from friends of one of the kids, or from the kids themselves, although neither child had any visible signs of pinkeye. But somehow Coop had picked up the virus in his right eye. The doctor gave me some ointment to use in Coop’s eye, and told us that it should clear up within a week. Coop was pretty upset that he was going to have to go around for a whole week wearing an eye patch.
“But Coop, why don’t you just go without glasses for a week?” I asked
“I can’t Hailey. My own eyes have now developed a lot of myopia on their own, and I don’t even own a pair of glasses that I can wear.’ Coop told me.
“What do you mean your eyes have become quite myopic?” I asked.
“Remember after the first year of wearing the strong minus over the plus contacts combination my eyes developed some myopia and I got stronger glasses?” Coop asked.
“I sort of remember you telling me about that, but didn’t you tell me that you likely wouldn’t become even more nearsighted? Didn’t you then tell me that your glasses needed to be about -5D stronger?” I questioned.
“Yes, that is what happened the first year. But then when I went back the next year the same thing had happened. My eyes got about –5 D worse, and I was going to need new glasses again. But my glasses were already so strong I decided I would let the doctor drop the power of my contact lenses, so he dropped them around 5D. Then last year I discovered I was having problems seeing distance again, so I went back and he lowered my contact lens prescription by around 5D more.” Coop told me.
“Did that mean that you had gotten myopic to the tune of about -15D.” I asked.
“Something like that.” Coop replied.
“Wow, no wonder you can’t go around without your combination. And I guess that you would need to have your eyes examined again to determine your proper prescription before you could even order a pair of glasses. And I bet the pinkeye will have cleared up before you could get those glasses.” I replied.
“That is exactly what the problem is Hailey.” Coop answered.
Finally the pink eye cleared up and things went back to normal for Coop. But I had started to do a lot of thinking. Coop didn’t really seem too upset that he had developed around -15D of myopia instead of having his formerly perfect eyesight. What was even stranger though was that he was not willing to give up on wearing his very strong minus glasses, even though there was a possibility that his eyesight would deteriorate even further. Was there something in this equation that I did not see?
Leah celebrated her second birthday, and I made sure that we took her to see our eye doctor to have her eyes examined. Apparently both kids had just the right amount of farsightedness for their ages. You see, a child is born very nearsighted, and as their eyes develop they become slightly farsighted. This little bit of farsightedness is easily overcome by the child’s powers of accommodation, and does disappear as the child grows older. But if the farsightedness goes away at too young an age that is a good indication that the child is going to be nearsighted at some point in the future.
Coop had his eyes examined as well, and this time he told me that he had developed more myopia. If he were to get glasses now his own prescription was going to have to be somewhere around -20D. I tried to convince him to give up on wearing the contacts and the really strong glasses and just wear glasses with his own prescription, but the stubborn man refused to do that. He loved wearing his extremely high powered minus lenses in his glasses and no amount of cajoling would change his mind.
A few weeks after Coop had gotten his new contact lenses, one morning after we had laid in bed making love Coop told me he was going to have his eyes operated on. I asked him what he meant by that, and he told me that as soon as he possibly could he was going to have implantable collamer lenses placed in his eyes to increase the plus power of his eyes naturally and then he would not have to wear contact lenses under his glasses. I told him he was crazy. He then explained to me that with his now approximately -20D of myopia, along with the strongest plus ICL’s that he could get he would have the right amount of myopia that would allow him to wear the strong glasses he really had his heart set on wearing for the rest of his life.
“But Coop, you will then actually be even more nearsighted than me.” I said.
“My glasses that I wear over my contacts are already stronger than the ones you need Hailey. There really won’t be any change. The only thing that will change is that I will no longer have to mess around with contact lenses.” Coop replied.
“You really want to do this Coop?” I asked.
“Yes, I do Hailey. And the ICL’s can be removed if I change my mind. Also, if I ever want to do it I can have my inner lenses removed and replaced with inner ocular lenses that can give me perfect vision again.” Coop said.
“Like you would ever do that Coop. What is wrong with you that makes you want to have such poor eyesight? And don’t tell me that it is so that you can empathize with me and my poor vision. I think you have some hang up over girls with thick glasses and that somehow you get off on wearing thick and strong glasses yourself. I am now beginning to think that it was my glasses that drew you to me.” I said angrily.
“What would you say if I told you that what you just said was true Hailey?” Coop asked.
“What can I say Coop. I can’t tell you I am going to leave you because there is no way I could look after and raise 2 kids on my own. I can barely see well enough to do what I have to do here in the condo. But be honest with me Coop. Do you even love me, for me or is it just my glasses that enthrall you?” I asked.
“Hailey, please believe me. I do love you for you. Your glasses are just the icing on the cake. I would never want you to leave me, nor would I ever leave you.” Coop replied.
“I do have to believe you Coop. But that is mostly because I have no other choice. When are you going to have this operation?” I questioned.
“As soon as you tell me that I can do it. It will cost us around $8,000.00.” Coop said.
“Oh, so now my input is needed. Well Coop, do what you want to do as long as it doesn’t affect me or the kids.” I replied.
What Coop had just told me shattered my self-confidence again. We had been together almost 7 years, and I had just found out that the only reason he had sought me out was because I was extremely nearsighted and had to wear thick glasses. My feelings regressed back to when I was in school and had been bullied and teased about my thick glasses. I didn’t know if I could ever trust Coop again, but I also knew that I had to give him a chance to regain that trust. I wanted him to love me for me, not because I was a half blind woman.
Coop knew I was extremely upset. But he did go ahead and have the operation. It was funny, but once he had his eyes fixed so he could wear the strong glasses he had worn for more than 6 years it was like an inner peace came over him. He was much easier to get along with, and he was more interested in me and the kids. He had always been very considerate towards me, but it now seemed that he was even more so. He and I both got swim goggles with our proper prescriptions in them, and we spent a lot of time at the complex pool with the kids. And as time went on I realized that Coop really did love me, not just for my thick glasses, but because I was a nice person and a good mother to our children. I rather liked the new Coop.
Specs4ever Jan 2016