By Myeisha Essex
Previously published in Silver Clouds Magazine
There was a time when my life was fueled by pure newsroom adrenaline. I was the Senior Editor overseeing the evening assignment desk at one of the nation’s top entertainment news organizations. My shift was 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday through Thursday. It was prime time for breaking stories, red carpet madness, and celebrity Instagram drama. I was a 30-year-old news editor and I loved everything about my job. I walked in the office everyday feeling like Sanaa Lathan’s Brown Sugar character, Sydney Shaw, who was likely inspired by Danyel Smith, who served as VIBE’s editor-in-chief in the 1990s. I managed a team of writers, making quick editorial decisions on everything from Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s royal exit to the rose ceremony drama on the latest episode of “The Bachelor.” I was fast and I was good.
During award show season, it felt like all the days blurred together, and I was at the center of it all with my eyes glued to a dozen tabs on two computer screens, phone buzzing nonstop, digging through legal documents, editing copy and mind juggling five stories at once. Ten to twelve-hour days in the office were common, but I never complained. This was my dream. I was a big-time news editor in Los Angeles with my name on the masthead. And when our team won Emmys for Outstanding Entertainment News Program in 2018, 2020, and 2021, I could finally say the dream had come true.
Except there was one problem. I could barely see it. Literally. The lines between my dream job and my health were blurring faster than a Robin Thicke song.
What most people didn’t know is I was doing all of this with a severe vision impairment. I have keratoconus. It’s a progressive eye disease where your cornea (the clear front part of your eye) thins and bulges into a cone shape, making your vision look like a world smeared in Vaseline. In my case, the condition had progressed too far for glasses to correct. My mother used to say, “You know she’s blind without her contacts on!” The politically correct term is low vision, but let’s just say I’m legally not allowed to drive without my contact lenses. And at work, I could see three versions of the same word and none of them were clear. Without my lenses, I lived in a watercolor painting with thousands of halos and extremely bad lighting.
My lenses are not your average drugstore brand. They’re scleral lenses, which are large, custom-made, computer-lathed contact lenses that cover most of your eye’s surface. Each one costs about $1,000 per eye, including the cost of the fitting. And if you lose it, scratch it, crack it, or drop it down the drain (which has happened more times than I care to admit), that’s another $1000. Thankfully, my insurance covered 50 percent of the cost, which made my out-of-pocket fees around $500 per eye.
When you have keratoconus, contact lenses are not optional. They are a medical necessity. But wearing a thick piece of plastic over your eyes for hours each day is not natural and it comes with consequences. For me, that means recurrent corneal abrasions, which are basically paper cuts on the surface of my eyes. They can happen from wearing my lenses too long, taking them out incorrectly, or when a tiny speck of uninvited dust gets trapped underneath. The cornea is one of the most pain-sensitive parts of the human body, and when it’s injured, it feels like sandpaper scraping across your eye while someone shines a bright light directly into your skull. The pain is a true ten out of ten. Until it heals, I cannot wear my lenses, which means waiting anywhere from a day to a full week before I can see clearly again.
So what do I do on those days? I stay home. Curtains drawn. Eyes closed. Lubricating drops and Advil on deck for the headache. And if anyone from work calls, all I can say is: “My eyes are down.”
Those “eye down” days became frequent enough that HR required doctor’s notes for every absence. In the newsroom world, frequent absences are not acceptable. News doesn’t stop, and the unspoken rule is you don’t either. Managing a newsroom is like a choreographed dance, and if someone fills in for you long enough, especially as an editor, the team will learn how to do the moves without you.
Still, no amount of hustle could fix what was happening with my eyes. Every time I went back to my doctor hoping for a miracle, he’d sigh and say, “You’re working with a poor foundation, Myeisha. You just have to learn to manage it.” Then one day, he looked me straight in my eyes and said, “Maybe you should think about starting your own business, so you can manage your off days better.”
I was furious. Did he know how hard I’d worked to get here? How many unpaid internships, cold red carpet interviews, fact-checked stories, midnight deadlines and how much student loan debt it took to earn that title? I’d written, edited, and produced thousands of pieces. I wasn’t about to give it all up because my corneas decided to act up.
But in August 2021, reality came for me anyway. I caught COVID. And while my body fought the virus, both of my eyes developed deep abrasions. I couldn’t see. At all. Within one week, I lost my vision, smell, and taste. It forced me to lay down.
Somewhere between the DayQuil, Tylenol, and tears, I fell into a deep meditation. I had a vision (pun intended) of myself still writing and editing, but on my own terms. It was like a sacred, divine reminder: even if I walked away from my job, my craft would still be mine. My talent didn’t depend on my title, and the stories I told didn’t depend on the company I worked for.
When I finally healed, I turned in my two weeks’ notice.
Of course, reality sets in fast. Keratoconus is like a kid; it doesn’t care if you’re a freelancer or full-time staffer, it still requires attention and expensive, ongoing care. You’re supposed to replace your lenses at least once a year, sometimes every six months, because your corneas can change shape like clay in a sculptor’s hands. A lens that fit in March might be useless by December.
Thankfully, Dr. E – the same doctor who first suggested I start my own business – did something I’ll never forget. As I transitioned out of my corporate job and figured out how to rebuild financially, he told me to stay in touch. He gave me his personal email and said, “Reach out whenever you need me.”
I’m shedding a tear as I write this because that simple act of compassion meant everything. It was care. Real care. The kind that doesn’t stop when the appointment ends.
Today, I’ve evolved out of my entertainment news era. I’m now the communications director at a nonprofit that advocates for women’s health and well-being, and I’m working on my memoir. I’m still a writer and editor with a progressive corneal eye disease. How about that for an oxymoron?
There are so many things people take for granted: clean water, deep breaths, a bed to call your own, and waking up to see the world clearly without help. Because here’s the truth: good eye care in America is expensive. Seeing clearly is treated like a luxury when it should be a basic human right. I often think about the people with low vision who don’t have a Dr. E, or the insurance, or the flexibility to rest when their “eyes are down.”
The headlines I wrote used to be about everyone else’s lives. These days, I’m just grateful to still be writing my own story – contacts, eye drops, solution and sunglasses in hand. I know it’s in my willingness to keep showing up, to keep writing, that makes a good story… even when everything looks a little blurry.
Myeisha Essex is an Emmy-award winning journalist, writer and wellness advocate based in Los Angeles. She enjoys writing about the health and well-being of Black women and girls, spirituality, and helping women come home to themselves: fully, softly and without apology.
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