Maryy Freeman

I didn’t know I had aphantasia until early 2025. I was listening to a CBC program, half-paying attention, when the host invited listeners to imagine an apple. I paused and tried. Nothing appeared. No colour, no shape, no suggestion of an image. I tried again, then with other familiar things, but there was still nothing. Just awareness without a picture.When I told my husband, he was genuinely startled. He couldn’t believe I didn’t see anything at all. I, in turn, couldn’t believe that he did. He described images in full detail, even colours that seemed to accompany certain sounds. I remember thinking that he must be speaking metaphorically. Surely people didn’t actually see things in their minds.I called my daughter. She was in her forties and, as it turned out, just like me. She couldn’t picture anything either. When she realized that others truly could, anger surfaced, anger at something unnamed, unrecognized, and therefore unmourned. I felt it too. All those years of being told, “Why don’t you remember that?” or “Didn’t you see it?” We had taken those words at face value, assuming they were figures of speech. We said that ourselves, I can picture that, I see what you mean, never suspecting that other people meant it literally.When my daughter’s husband learned this, he paused and said, “Oh. That explains a lot.” My husband began noticing small things as well. He saw how I sometimes hesitate before opening a cupboard, or reach into the one beside it before finding what I want. It’s a fleeting misstep, I quickly adjust, but I don’t have an internal picture guiding me to the right place. I’ve always thought of it as a quirk, nothing more.There are moments when I feel a quiet resentment at the advantage others seem to have. But more often, I notice what my daughter and I don’t carry. We don’t replay scenes from the past. We don’t relive arguments in sharp detail. We don’t sit with old hurts, revisiting them again and again. We rarely stay angry for more than a few minutes. Our inner worlds are calm, unburdened by images that linger or intrude.I’m beginning to understand that vivid mental imagery can be both a gift and a weight. It can haunt as much as it delights. We may not be able to summon palm trees on an ocean beach, but neither do we re-experience cruelty or loss in graphic detail. We know what those images are, we just don’t see them. And in that absence, there is a kind of peace I hadn’t understood until now.