I get you! MGD and blepharitis.

It’s one reason I use audiobooks more now (plus I can listen to a book while doing one of my daily hot compresses for my eyes.)

Have you seen an ophthalmologist that specifies in assisting with those conditions? In 2018 mine got bad. Like legally-blind, couldn’t open my eyes levels of photophobia. Nightmares of my eyes burning/peeling off my face just to wake up and realise the pain was real.

I’d been to multiple ophthalmologists and a few optometrists but just kept being told “hot compresses” but this level of bad was enough that I looked for someone specialising in dry eye conditions and they got it back to manageable levels in a few months with a combination of antibiotics and steroid drops.

Also, look for good electric eye compresses. When you’re supposed to be doing them 2x/day for 20+ minutes at a time it is really worth it. Even managed, there is a whole eye care routine for maintaining MGD and/or blepharitis.

Once you get the dry eye back to manageable levels reading for hours on end - compresses aside - should be possible. But until then it’s sort of shooting yourself in the foot - you need to get your eyes’ self-lubrication back under control.

The lack of other physical symptoms makes it extra tricky because while as a kid I used to get awful physical symptoms, as an adult I don’t.

So I will really have no fecking idea and be thinking it’s time to see a therapist again until the blood starts. Then I’m like ah ok I’ll feel better tomorrow (it usually doesn’t last that long.)

There’s literally hormonal issues that can make you happy to suicidal in hours.

I know my period’s coming on not from physical cramping but due to a sudden sense of hopelessness, worthlessness, and suicidal ideation. I’ll be walking past an overpass for a bridge thinking “I should jump” and get home and realise my period’s starting “…oh that’s where that came from.”

I didn’t realise how much lack of sun exposure played a role too until I moved further North and got such short winter days. My mental health is way more precarious in the winter when I’m at work before the sun rises and after it sets than in June, when the sun’s out by 4am there’s still some light out past 10pm.

I read way faster than I listen but I feel like I get more into the world building with audiobooks.

Plus it allows me to still enjoy books even if my eyes are strained or need a hot compress due to MGD.

For similar reasons I get details or theories I maybe never considered reading the books. (Spoilers for Harry Potter)

>!I never really understood why people hated Harry so much for being emotional or whiny or easily upset since it seemed like aside from being a teen, but they did seem to all start bickering a lot more especially in book 5 onward. Then it occurred to me: Duh. Not only are they teens, Harry is a literal horcrux. Same as carrying the locket. Of course… I also hated the “accidental horcrux” bit given it’s supposed to be really complicated but “his soul was so fragile by that point.” But somehow he kept killing other people afterward without accidentally making more? But fine, whatever. From the end of 4 onward, Harry has an inseparable horcrux and the other two are near it all the time. Of course they’re crabby.!<