Life Update
Hey, everyone. Sorry for the radio silence lately. There’s been a lot going on. Without going into detail, I went to the doctor because something didn’t seem right and they had a “Let’s see if it gets worse” attitude. Well, the next morning I woke up with a feeling of such complete dread that I made an appointment with someone else for a second opinion. It’s a good thing I did. The new doctor told me that had I waited, things could have escalated quickly and the issue might have spread. The surgery I had was successful, and I am now completely recovered.
Another life update is I just found out I have synesthesia, lol.
I didn’t know it wasn’t normal to see numbers, letter, or words in color. I thought everyone did. I knew synesthesia existed but always in the most extreme formats (like seeing music or tasting words).
I’ll be honest, at first I didn’t think what I had was synesthesia but rather very strong and consistent “color associations” but a conversation with my girlfriend actually showed me they were more than just that.
We were talking about perspective one day. Actually, I was bitching about how my Japanese planner began on a Monday instead of a Sunday because, as I explained, it was “spatially incorrect” but also Monday was red and the week had to start on Sunday because Sunday was yellow and the week *always* started on a yellow. But not just any yellow. A *specific* shade of yellow. That very specific shade of yellow was Sunday. Therefore, the week had to start on Sunday.
My girlfriend looked at me a moment, blinked, then said “What?”
I didn’t know how else to explain so I asked her what her colors of the week were and she didn’t know what I was talking about. “Your colors. What are your colors? What’s Monday?”
“Monday’s not… anything,” she replied.
I didn’t understand. I told her my colors then said, “Wednesday is the same yellow as the number 9 and also the letter C” and she stared at me a moment more and said, “Dude, I think you have synesthesia.”
I denied it. Everyone thought in colors! How could they not? How could you look at a nice dark forest green and not think “Ah, that is the color of Thursday”???
I thought it was silly. But as I was driving home that night I was listening to some music in the car and I had a very vivid note pop into my mind: F#.
And F# was BROWN.
I was so shocked I didn't know what to do about it.
A few days later I went to a bookstore and bought Maureen Seaberg's book The Synesthesia Experience. On the cover it literally lists examples that say "tasting words, seeing music, hearing color." I thought to myself, I don't have any of those so surely letters with colors is not synesthesia. But then right there in the Introduction, the author states that letters, numbers, and words all have colors to her... just like me.
I began to devour the book taking a pencil to every line and paragraph that reflected my own experiences. In Chapter 2, "The Red of His E String", the violinist Itzhak Perlman stated that his musical notes all have colors. His F# is blue. Mine is brown. C, of course (for me), was yellow. Open G was dark green but not Thursday, and D on the A string was a thick and silky midnight blue that was almost black. Needless to say, I was freaking out. Nobody told me this wasn’t normal. The colors were always there. I thought everyone had them.
I found out what I have is called “grapheme-color synesthesia” (as well as “ordinal-linguistic personification”, where numbers/letters/etc are associated with personalities and genders. The number 4, for example, is red-brown and feminine and a bit bookish. It is almost the same color as Friday, which might be linked by the letter F (Four, Friday, Feminine). Maybe. I don't know how the fuck this works).
True to form, I've been spending a LOT of time researching it. Reading accounts by other synesthetes has been comforting and I find that many things in their stories resonate with me and my own experiences. A lot of things just seem to make sense now like why, when letters or numbers are shown in a color that “differs” from my own personal perception, I get viscerally upset. I saw a children’s wooden alphabet toy set in the store not too long ago, but the colors did not reflect my own. Cue internal screaming of “C is not green!!!”.
Needless to say I’ve been writing about my own experiences trying to make sense or find patterns in my color associations. I have found a few though most are random, but like a pleasant dream I am fearful that if I dig too deeply that the mystery will unravel before my eyes and I will lose the beauty of the gift. So I dare not seek complete understanding, and I am okay with not knowing.
So this, my dear friends, is what I have been up to.
