I guess I never knew what it meant to "blink myopically"

I have recently discovered I am quite probably short sighted. To be fair, I knew my eyes weren't perfect starting last year sometime, where the driver of whatever car I was in would ask, "What does that sign say?" and then be able to read it before I was.

At church, I realized it was hard to read the lyrics from some of the songs while in the back, but blamed it on being far away and whatever funky visualizations they had going on. Then one Sunday, a pastor put up a passage from the Bible to demonstrate formatting. And I couldn't read it. I could have written that off too, saying I could still see the formatting idea and had the text in my own Bible and so didn't really need to read it and maybe that wasn't what he was going for, but David was sitting right next to me and he could read it.

The tragic truth. I was nearsighted.

As the weeks went on after that, I became a bit of a hypochondriac by looking at everything and then freaking out. As it stands right now, letters start to get blurry on signs five feet away. I don't notice it in sunny conditions, but much more in lower lighting. And I notice that I sit someone nearer to the computer than I'd really prefer with this chair and I get a little nearer to stuff in the grocery store to read it than I'd prefer.

It's way more noticeable with letters and signs, largely because of the sharp edges and the fact you have to see all the edges to be able to identify the meaning. Like that park bench could be blurry, but I can still tell it's a park bench. I see it, identify it, and then dismiss it. Which is why I didn't notice for so long. I couldn't tell things were blurry because I only looked to identify, I didn't look to see. But letters... you have to be able to see them.

If I scrunch up my nose and squint, I can make things swim into focus. And I look stupid.

It's not a big deal, yet. I can still see cars and people and everything and even if I can't precisely read the license plate until close, I can still see there is a car, which direction it's going, how fast, and color and type, from the same distance as everyone else.

It's a good thing this didn't happen when I was a kid. I would have been devastated. And glasses would have been the Worst Thing Ever. Because you need them to see, but you have to take them off at night. And they can't fall off or break. And you can't really swim with them on. Now it's like, how was that a big deal? And glasses can be chic.

Even so, I'm mildly annoyed. Is it reversible? Eye exercises, maybe?

Or maybe we can blame the increase in nearsightedness on computers.

*narrows eyes at the computer screen* *not myopically, just glaring*