(no subject)

[brin_bellway]

[cw: unsanitary]


[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by Anonymous)


...oh fuck, hang on, is the reason why other people associate rheum with sleep because *it's the only time they go several straight hours without rubbing their eyes*?

I have long cultivated a habit of not touching my face in public, and I often have to remove rheum buildup from my eyes after returning from a work shift or other long outing.

---

Okay, I looked at that Wikipedia article, and:

When the individual is awake, blinking of the eyelid causes rheum to be washed away with tears via the nasolacrimal duct.

...since when?

Like, yeah, five hours of not-touching-your-face-while-awake isn't enough time for the rheum to *dry*, but there's definitely white mucus collecting at the noseward corners of my eyes throughout the day!

(Fun fact: if you (...I?) clean your eyes at bedtime, the morning rheum often won't have had time to dry either. I do this routinely, as part of checking for loose eyelashes so they don't fall off and poke me while I am trying to sleep.)

Comments

[contrarianarchon]

What? I am very confused, since my subjective experience here is that nearly all the buildup happens like, immediately on waking; I don't have any gunk in my eyes the first time I wake up and then I have a lot the second time I wake up and then it dries in <1hr and then it's usually not a problem at all for the rest of the day. So how slow it is to dry for you is as surprising to me as anything else.