I am completely literal when I write this.
The memories of my childhood feel like stories told by a stranger of their own.
Every few years I am a different person, so are you, courtesy of your cellular cycle. But for me it feels different.
Imagine what its like to live out your life as a person who can rarely visualize, a life where you need a photo to remember what you looked like when you broke your bones, celebrated a birthday, or graduated from school.
Imagine a life where you need to be reminded of every visual detail of your own grand adventures and mischievous plots just so you can laugh along with your childhood friends recounting.
Perhaps you could imagine living on what often feels like pure instinct, but really isn't. Or having your only memorable dream being a fever induced nightmare where you are crushed by an upward scrolling alphabet, like a shitty Halloween parody of the star wars credits.
Now imagine recalling your mother soothing you that night, suggesting to think of something happier, SpongeBob, and simply not being able to.
Could you begin to imagine not being able to recall your fathers face when he's still alive? Or simply giving up when it gets hard to draw without a guide?
Think about what it might feel like to remember only how you felt about something. Desperately trying to keep you the same person you were, or thought you were. Only to stumble across a stranger from the past.
Imagine growing up trying your best to mimic other people as to not forget, and it becomes second nature.
What did you day dream about as a kid? And think, without the dream, what would it be? I experience the phenomenon as a relaxed state of blankness, until something jolts me, a smell, a sound, or a passing thought.
Try thinking of the word "imagine" as prompt for memory recall instead of actually "imagining".
Finally, as a reader, ponder skipping long descriptions and scene settings due to a lack of excitement from descriptor words. What it may be like to assume how something looks rather than creating it in your head.
For me, that's aphantasia.
Though, who knows. I can't think about it anyway.
