My World Changed for 24 Hours - Part 4

When I got home and had a chance to just lie down in my bed and stare up at the ceiling, my ceiling was also 3D. 

Now, our ceilings have that 1970s popcorn look to them. I pretend they look like daisies so I don't see it as ugly like I would if it was just the stipple effect with no pattern.

Well, so usually, the ceiling looks like it's well above my head. I guess we have 8 feet ceilings, though we haven't measured them. My 6 feet tall kids can reach them, but I can't. So I am guessing they are about 8 feet tall ceilings.

Usually, I know a ceiling is there but I don't pay much attention to it.

This whole idea reminds me of a scene in the movie "Blast from the Past" with Alicia Silverstone and Brendan Fraser. 

[Photo of Eve (Alicia Silverstone) and Adam (Brendan Fraser) sitting on a couch, sipping champagne and eating sushi) from https://bombreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/blast-from-past.jpg]

Brendan Fraser plays a character named "Adam" in the movie, and he has just shown up at Alicia's (Eve's) house. Adam is in a room with Eve's roommate, Troy. Adam looks up at the ceiling and tells Troy, "You have nice ceilings."

Troy says, "You like ceilings?" and has a perplexed look on his face.

Adam says, "Not particularly." He looks happy as he says it. It is just an amusing little scene in the movie. If you haven't seen that movie, see it. It's such a fun movie.

Back to my own ceilings. ... Well, my bed is standard height. I looked up at the ceiling and I felt like it was 3 feet away from me. I felt as if the ceiling was going to crush me. It was a bizarre feeling: to have cognitive dissonance about my ceiling.

Cognitive dissonance is something that means "two opposite thoughts held at the same time in your head." I know that the ceiling won't crush me. I know it's not falling. I know it's not just 3 feet away from me. But it looks like it's falling on me and that if I stand up, I will bump my head on it.

It was scary, and part of me said that I wanted to move RIGHT THEN - to a place with cathedral ceilings. It's very bizarre when you feel like your home is going to crush you.

Maybe I am in a movie kind of mood, but now I am remembering the scene from Star Wars: A New Hope, when the walls of the trash compactor threaten the heros of the movie.

https://youtu.be/7U3Oti2L8S4

I tried rolling over, I tried looking at a farther part of the ceiling. The whole thing was just really weird and a bit unnerving. I wasn't a fan.

Eventually, I went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning and could still see in 3D!

I took dogs on walks and enjoyed the new spring blossoms on the trees. It was interesting knowing when to dodge tree limbs rather than walk right into them, like I usually have in the past. I was grateful for that new skill!

About mid-afternoon, my eyes got very tired and felt like the muscles had been working too hard, and my eyes slipped back to normal. I was back to seeing the way I normally see.

The next day, I tried aligning my eyes again, to see if I could do the 3D thing again. The muscles in my eyes hurt when I tried. They had been overworked and needed a rest.

I thought perhaps that the next week at Vision Therapy, we would do the same thing and I would be able to get the magic 3D vision back, but we didn't.

My usual therapist, A, was there, and she is so gentle and calm with me. Her entire objective with me is to help me feel safe. She is exceptionally good at it. She is progressing slowly with me. It occurred to me that I just wasn't ready yet to see in 3D, since it made me feel like my house was crushing me.

Ever since seeing 3D, I have noticed that ceilings now have an arc look to them. They used to be a straight line to me, left to right. But now the ceiling line above me, in front of me (where it meets the wall right in front of me) is raised in a gentle arc. If I look to the left or the right, the arc goes down. The part where the ceiling has a corner on the left, the ceiling arcs down to the left. The part where the ceiling has a corner on the right, the ceiling arcs down to the right.

I asked a friend if this is what they see, too. "Do ceilings have an arc look to them? Or do they just look straight?" and my friend said that perhaps I am just perceiving space differently now. I think that's completely true. I am definitely perceiving space differently now.

Case in point - I can now park my car straight. Just in time to not be driving anywhere anymore thanks to Covid-19. I guess that's what "they" call "irony." Who? I don't know. Just "they."

It's true - a few weeks ago I went on one of my last grocery shopping trips before quarantining myself for what I think is now 6 weeks or more. (I have lost track.) And I got out of the car. I felt like perhaps my car was in the space differently, so I walked around my car and looked at it from all the angles.

This was the first time I have noticed that I parked myself perfectly in a parking spot. I wasn't 4 feet from the front, and I wasn't crooked from the side. A first! I am 40+ years old (creeping up on 50) and I have now parked straight maybe 3 times total.

I am definitely starting to perceive space in new ways.

Migraines & Chess

Note: I just signed up to be an Amazon affiliate. This blog & information is provided free, from me. I would appreciate if you are going to buy something on Amazon, what I recommend or something else, if you could please click through either of the two products I mention in this blog post. It will maybe give me a dime or something. But every dime helps me right now in my life. Thank you so much. <3

About a year ago, I started going to a neurologist to diagnose my constant migraines. He did wonderful work. I had several brain scans and blood tests. All sorts of things.

He laid out a plan that was like playing chess - pawns in the front to help guard the more important pieces, then stronger pieces guarding the King.

The pawns in his regime for me include: drinking water, getting enough sleep (I have a constant awful time with this piece of the puzzle), and eating fairly well.

The knights or bishops of my regime include high doses of Magnesium Oxide: 400 mg and Vitamin B2: Riboflavin 400 mg.

The Queen is the one low dose medicine he has put me on.

Before he put me on this regime, I had a constant migraine. It varied in pain from about a 2 to an 8. But it was always there.

After starting the regime with him, my migraines went down to about 1-3 per month. If I get one, my first order of defense is to take Aleve. Most of the time, that solves the problem. If it doesn't, he has a caffeine medicine for me to take. I rarely (basically: never) need to take that medicine. I keep losing and finding that bottle. I don't know where to keep it, because I don't use it!

This past week, my personal life stress has been through the roof. One of the things I have done is gotten my resume together and also started to apply for jobs. I was turned down for about 10 jobs.

My personal life is just overly stressful.

As I was staring at the computer, making my resume and applying for jobs on indeed dot com, I realized that it was easier for me to read if I took off my glasses and shut my eye. (The habit of how I have read, my whole life.)

So, I did that. I didn't think much of it.

At the end of the day, I was telling a friend that I had a bad headache. My friend asked me if I had worn my glasses that day much. I confessed that I had hardly worn them at all. I had been staring at this computer for most of the day.

"Aha!" My brain said.

Ok. Notes to self:

1) wear glasses

2) take breaks

3) try to remember to keep both eyes open when reading

4) don't keep staring at the computer for an entire day; look out the window and focus far away

5) palm (to palm is to cover your eyes with your hands and let your eyes have a rest. They aren't bringing in any visual information. This allows your body to relax).

Maybe when I start to feel a migraine, I can slow down, let go of the tunneling stress that I do inside my body, and breathe. Check and see if I am wearing my glasses. Am I shutting one eye. Do I need to palm? Should I drink some water?

There is a lot to learn. I am so grateful for the good people at my vision therapy setting me up to succeed! They are teaching me solid life skills that I never had, growing up.

I feel like I am starting to get my feet on a good trajectory.

Forgiveness

[A photo of me on my back deck. I have short blonde hair and dark blue glasses on. I am wearing my sunflower dress. My hair has remnants of lavender dye I put in it. You can see my Virginia Pine Tree in the background.]

At vision therapy, my vision therapist told me that an important part of our journey is forgiveness.

With my own journey, I have had many different viewpoints on forgiveness. I have blogged them and written about it in journals and my books.

I bristled because of where I am on my current journey in my personal life. I am not ready to forgive someone significant in my life right now.

I listened to what my vision therapist had to say, though, and I came away with a new definition of forgiveness that I want to share.

He said that forgiveness means to let go of something that was taking up significant space inside us. And then, we will have room for the next thing to come in there to take up the space.

He said it much more eloquently. But that was the general idea.

Essentially - let go of the thing that is bothering you, so that there is room for something good to come in and fill that space.

Isn't that a beautiful definition of forgiveness? I love this idea. It's a definition of forgiveness that I can easily embrace.

 

End One Thing, Start Something New

As I embark on this journey of wearing new glasses and learning how to see (and how to walk!), I am also in a major shifting area in my own personal life. I have a lot going on. Every day for me has a lot going on.

[This is a photo I took of a sugar maple tree; the leaves are vivid orange and the cyan blue sky peeks from between the leaves in a few small places in the photo.]

I haven't blogged this last week (has it been two weeks now?) And I sincerely apologize for that to my brand new readers.

I am not yet ready to share on this blog the other thing that I am ending and beginning, but it's a big life change I am going through.

It is interesting how sometimes life gives us a few different angles to see things from. I am learning to use my eyes together. I am looking forward to leaving this double-vision thing behind. And I am leaving a major part of my life as I type this, and looking forward to my next chapter. Two different things going on at the same time - just like having double vision.

I look forward to leaving behind the double-vision so I will have clarity and happiness with my new future looking forward.

Thank you for understanding about my lack of recent blog posts. I have a ton of posts in my head that I want to write; I hope to get them out of my head and in to this blog as soon as I can breathe and get it really revved up and starting.

PS: Does anyone know how to use WordPress so I can type posts but they can be scheduled for a future date? I can't for the life of me figure that out. And it's slowing me down with production.