Yeah, I think I may need to talk with my ophthalmologist.

It's not even what every person with astigmatism sees. It's different for every person, depending on what angle the curve in the your eye (cornea or lens) is at. I don't have it that bad, but if you draw a bunch lines at different angles intersecting at their middle, some lines are clear, some vibrate, and some are blurry. Op Art gives me a headache, as when I look at it, it just vibrates.

My lights have a star burst pattern

Not brighter for the most part, just bigger. And more often than not with a perfectly vertical line down my vision

Astigmatism can look like motion blur on stationary objects.

Thank God someone said it.

It reflects what it feels like when I don't wear glasses or contacts. - but doesn't 'look' like this

Hi, nice to meet you here! thanks :)

You can have myopia and an astigmatism.

Myopia vs hyperopia is whether you're near- or long-sighted, and is determined by the Sph power in your prescription (with a dirty great asterisk that I'll get into in a minute).

Astigmatism is determined by whether your vision is distorted along an axis. Say you have a basketball, and it's standing perfectly normal and untouched. That's basically an eye with no astigmatism. If someone sits on it, then the ball will be 'squashed', and there will suddenly be part of the ball that's closer to the opposite side, and part that's further from the opposite side. Without getting into weird things to do with the cornea, that's basically what's happening to an eye where the patient has astigmatism.

If you have astigmatism, then your prescription will feature two additional values - 'Cyl' and 'Axis'. Remember how I told you about the squashed basketball? In vision, that effect basically results in your vision being distorted in a line, like a fun house mirror. The way you correct that distortion is by having a lens that is thicker in one direction, and thinner in the direction that runs perpendicular to that direction. Or, to simplify it - at 3 and 9 o'clock, the lens is thicker, at 12 and 6 o'clock, the lens is thinner. The difference between the thickest and thinnest part of the lens is the 'Cyl' power, measured in dioptres. And then Axis determines which angle '12' points to, on a scale of 180°.

If your prescription has a cyl power, then you have astigmatism. However, if your prescription looks like, say, Sph: -6.50, Cyl: -0.50, Axis: 50, they're going to talk far more about your myopia than they're going to talk about your astigmatism, because your astigmatism is the smallest of potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Back to my dirty great asterisk:

There are two ways of representing the 'power' of a lens (Sph and Cyl values are known as 'powers'). You have the positive cyl form, and the negative cyl form. Say you have a lens that is +1.00 (Sph), -2.00 (Cyl). At 12 and 6, these powers are correct. You measure that lens curvature, you will get a Spherical power of +1.00. However, if you measure the curvature of the lens at 3 and 9, you'll get a spherical power of -1.00. Which one is correct? Neither and both. So you can represent that lens' power as +1.00, -2.00, or -1.00, +2.00. They both refer to the same lens. Thing is, negative spherical powers are used to correct myopia, while positive spherical powers are used to correct hyperopia. Of course, if someone needed this particular lens to correct their vision, you'd just say they had astigmatism and not bother with hyperopia or myopia, but it's an important point in the context of my dirty great asterisk :P

Source: used to make glasses. If I've mucked up anywhere, any DOs, Optoms, or Opthalmologists feel free to correct me :]

Inaccurate af, the lights don’t have the ‘star’ effect going on and this just looks like someone under the influence