At one point in middle school, A Mango Shaped Space was the book that was getting passed from person to person and getting read. I was intrigued. It seemed so much more beautiful and colorful and amazing than life. The idea of every letter having different colors. And I wished for the same. Because it seemed like an amazingly beautiful way of seeing life.
Some ways, though, seemed different. Different colored letters making completely different colored words. I understood the whole-words having parts and colors and feelings. That's what words did. But individual letters?
Because I did not see the individual letters as much more than letters, I thought, there is no way I could have synesthesia.
I was jealous.
Then I posted "My Number Friends," and read comments.
Chelsea from Cheetah-Chottah Press posted this:
Well, as my bf says, "not one cold day in hell will you find two synesthetes who agree".
And I thought, maybe I do count.
I have my number friends. They all have ideas and personalities and attributes.
Some words have shapes and sounds and feelings.
Some words hurt me physically to say them.
(But most don't hurt.)
To me, bigot is tall and gray and thin. Egotistical is written in round sparkling pink letters, like a gel pen. Verisimilitude is green silk falling.
But not all words have these different things, which is where I am unsure of this idea.
A dog is a dog. A concrete thing. I think of a dog, of my dog, of the dogs I've known. It depends on the context. If it's something scary, it's likely to be more German-Shepherd-ish. If it's cute or friendly or nice, it's likely to be one of my dogs, in my mind. I have a very specific image, too, of a dog in my head when it is a stupid dog (which I won't say because people can be particular about their dog breeds). Likewise, a cow is a cow is a cow.
Concrete nouns are generally concrete images. It is adjectives and ideas and abstract nouns that have these colors and ideas and thoughts.
It's smatterings of different things all thrown in together.
And that's why I say I have shades of synesthesia.
Edit: I can't spell. So I'm fixing it now. It's not synthenesia. It's synesthesia. So many consonants. It's a confusing word. I thought I looked it up, too, before I hit published. Oh well. It's still going to have the wrongly-spelled url though, because I've already linked to things and it seems complicated to fix. Labels: me, my brain, numbers, synesthesia, words