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I discovered something about myself in my adult life: I have aphantasia.

What this means is that I don’t construct visual images in my mind. Neither in my imagination or with my memories.

Honestly, until I was in my twenties, I had no idea other people could.

I figured when people “pictured things in their mind,” they were speaking metaphorically and just recreating the feel of the thing.

I can pull up an indistinct, sketchy image, like a vague watercolor. But mostly, if you ask me to think of a beach, I’ll imagine the texture of sand, the warmth of the sun, and the sound and feel of lapping waves, instead of creating a detailed image.

My husband is highly visual. When he reads books he says it’s like a movie playing out in his mind.

I can read a book and thoroughly enjoy the story without ever picturing the characters and only vaguely picturing the setting. I’m 4 books into Lindsay Buroker’s Emperor’s Edge books (which are fantastic), and have just now solidified the idea in my head that the assassin Sicarius has short blond hair. I only remember it now because the main character, Aramanthe, has recently touched his hair. When it was just a visual clue, my brain ignored it.

My husband would have known from the first moment Sicarius was described.

Some people talk about aphantasia as though it’s some sort of disability, but to me, it’s just a different way of thinking and remembering.

When I think of the beautiful lookout we stopped at on a pass between Wyoming and Idaho years ago, I can’t recreate the exact picture. But I remember the vastness of it, the way the mountains piled up, one behind another, paling as they shrank down into a blazing, cloud-filled valley. I know that the air was vigorously fresh, and everything about the moment flung out in a wild freedom.

And so I don’t miss the fact that I can’t picture it with visual details.

If I see a picture of that pass, I recognize it immediately. But if you take the picture away, I can’t recreate the image in my mind.

 

 

There was an exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry once that tested facial recognition. It flashed a face up on a screen for a second or two, then you had to spin some wheels to select the right hair, eyes, nose, and mouth of the person you’d just seen.

I just stared at the exhibit wondering what I was missing. Why would they ask something so impossible? My husband walked up, did a couple faces without blinking, and moved on because it was boring.

That was the first time I KNEW something was different in my brain.

 

 

Which leads me to one of my worst fears:

When I was little, I thought police sketch artists were just a device that TV shows used to tell the cops who the bad guy was. Because how could someone in real life remember a face well enough to describe it to an artist? And more impossible yet, have them adjust the picture until it was right?

If I’m ever the sole witness to a crime, people, we’re in trouble. Unless the police are good at picking out criminals from descriptors like, “He was smallish, but fierce. His hair was…um…well, it looked a little angry. Also, he skulked.”

 

 

The question I always get next is: How do you describe things in you books without being able to see them in your mind?

 

Which is an excellent question, and shall be answered in my next post.