Why I stopped counting the number of times I touched my eyes

That moment when you realize one eye is behaving differently

I remember sitting in front of the mirror for what felt like hours, just pulling at my eyelids. It’s funny how celebrities talk about their surgical history as if it’s just another resume bullet point, like Jang Young-ran mentioning her first and second eyelid surgeries during interviews. For me, it wasn’t some career-defining moment. It was more about the constant, nagging feeling that the left side never quite matched the right. I ended up spending about 3 million won at a clinic in Gangnam, thinking that a quick fix for the asymmetry would stop me from feeling like I had to angle my face in every single photo I took. I remember the doctor talking about ‘in-out’ lines and how it would open up my eyes, but honestly, I was just tired of staring at the mirror.

The reality of the recovery period

People always talk about the ‘summer break’ being the perfect time for surgery because you have time to hide, but the reality is just a lot of sitting in a dark room with frozen peas wrapped in a kitchen towel. I was told the swelling would go down in two weeks, but that turned into a month, and then three. It’s not just the physical pain, which was surprisingly manageable, but the waiting game. You check the mirror every morning hoping for symmetry, only to find one eye is still stubbornly hiding the crease. It’s weird how much space this occupies in your brain, even when you try to act like it’s no big deal.

Trying to fix what was already touched

Revision surgery is a whole different beast. I didn’t plan on needing it, but after the first round, the ‘in-out’ line looked more like a messy mistake. When I went back to talk about an eyelid revision, the atmosphere was different. They talk about scar tissue and how the skin is already thinned out from the previous work. It’s not like fixing a typo in a document; you’re dealing with limited resources. I heard stories about people having to deal with medical complications or legal battles over bad outcomes, and that made me hesitate. Is it really worth it to go in a second time just because someone once told me my eyes were the reason I didn’t get a job or wasn’t looking ‘right’?

The lingering uncertainty of the results

Even now, when I look at photos from before the surgeries versus now, I see the change. But I don’t know if I can say I’m ‘fixed.’ There’s this strange disconnect where my eyes look objectively different—maybe even better to a stranger—but the asymmetry still feels like it’s haunting me, just in a slightly different location. Sometimes I look at people who haven’t touched their eyes at all and feel this weird twinge of envy. Maybe I should have just left them alone in the first place. The cost, the constant checking, the worrying about whether I need a third round to fix the second round—it’s a cycle that’s hard to break once you start.

It never really feels finished

I catch myself thinking about whether to go back for a minor tweak on the lower lid to address some fine lines, or maybe the ‘eye-opening’ surgery that everyone seems to be doing lately. But then I remember that week of not being able to wash my face properly and the way the anesthesia made me feel fuzzy for days. I think I’ve reached a point where I’m just too tired to care about perfection. Maybe it’s better to just leave it as it is, even if it’s not perfectly symmetrical. I don’t think I have the energy to explain to another person why I need a specific fold. It’s strange how I started this to feel more confident and ended up feeling more critical of every blink.