I have a bad habit of wearing my contacts all the time.  I rarely take them out at night and when it’s time to use a fresh pair, I just take out the old ones and put in the new ones.  My poor eyes hardly ever get a break from having a foreign object in them.  I also am not very good at keeping track of how long I’ve used a pair, so they end up getting way more mileage than they ever were meant to.  It’s a testament to the hardiness of a pair of contacts, this way that I abuse them.  You’d think I would have had some sort of problem by now, but my eyes are perfectly healthy (except for the nearsightedness and astigmatism, of course).

Last time I went to the optometrist, I remember her saying that leaving my contacts in like that is like wearing a dirty pair of underwear for a couple of days.  It was one of those things that created a terrible image and got me to start taking out my contacts at night for awhile.  But alas, as time goes by, old habits creep back and I am doing the same old thing again.  Tonight I took my contacts out for the first time in a looong time and it feels good.  After all, my eyes need to breathe and having a plastic cover prevents that from happening as effectively as it could.  It’s nice to feel air on my pupils again and not have a strange piece of plastic between my eyeball and eyelid.  Though I’ve long since gotten used to the feel of contacts, my eyes still appreciate when they’re bare again.

I really need to try to stop “wearing dirty underwear” on my eyes, lest it damage my eyes later on.