It is also worth noting that I have a unique eye condition that also affects my makeup application and product preferences.
I have nerve palsy in my right eye, which is thought to be caused by a serious case of rubella which I contracted as a child before I was immunised.
What it means is that I have little control over my right eye. It often doesn’t often look straight ahead and instead wanders off toward the right. I can’t use my right eye to look to my left eye and I can’t close my left eye and keep my right eye open. I also can't look straight ahead so my head sits permanently at an angle facing the left. The pupil in my right eye no longer reacts to light so you will always notice that it is clearly larger than the pupil in my left eye.
This affects my ability to apply eye makeup because I can’t see clearly what I am doing to my left eye. It also means it is in effect impossible to apply winged eyeliner (*sniff*).
It also means that I can't take photo's of myself looking straight ahead.
I have had several surgeries on my eye throughout the years and have had two unfortunate complications.
The less annoying one is that my inner right eye is quite swollen and red. I recently had a surgery to reduce this problem which has worked really well but it is still very different to a normal eye.
Far more significantly from the point of view of makeup application is that the tear duct on my right eye has given up. This means that my right eye constantly leaks tears. It can look like I am crying out of one eye. This has significant implications for under eye concealer and eye shadows that I apply to my lower lash line and around the tear duct area.
On a personal level, I think it is something that I have struggled with over the years - confidence wise. Strangely, I actually think that I am more conscious of it the older I get. I am, however, used to these challenges and in the grand scheme of things there could be a lot worse things to happen.
