Samantha Julien

Until last year, I was convinced everyone was lying when they were saying that they could picture things in their minds (for example in primary school when we would do relaxation exercises asking us to ''picture ourselves on a beach'' and the likes). I never once thought I was the one that was different. It is also quite strange, because I consider myself to be a very imaginative person - I love to write, I played-pretend a lot when I was a kid, I had lots of ''imaginary friends'' that I actually could not see (now I wonder if my friends who also had those were able to see them or not), etc. In recent years, I started reading a lot of fantasy, which is probably my favorite hobby at the moment. I cannot picture anything at all when I read (or in general, my score is 16), and I absolutely need music to feel immerse in the world I am reading about. Last year, I saw an Instagram video of a person saying how amazing it is to read and to picture everything you see on the page, then it was pictures of fanart from some books. Someone commented that it sounds lovely, but some people cannot picture anything in their heads. I looked through the comments and realized that most people did not understand how not being to picture things was possible. And then, I knew. I googled. I asked my friends and family to answer this question I had taken for granted with the upmost sincerity. I realized I had lived in a bubble, and then I got very sad. Some people can see things? They can picture someone's face, relive memories in their heads (I narrate them), even hear someone's voice? They see movies in their heads when they read? I can't. It felt like I was grieving. I kept thinking that when the people I love ultimately leave this world, I would forget them. I won't be able to see their faces in my head or hear their voice, I won't be able to picture how they walked or acted. It broke my heart. At the same time, it also made me understand why I am so terrible at remembering faces or people I've met. I've always felt so guilty when someone would come up to me with a smile, say my name, and I would just stay there awkwardly. Or why I often can't follow the plot of movies\series with lots of characters - they all look the same, it takes me ages to finally be able to tell them apart. The only positive thing about this, so far, is that I seem to be able to forget people I want to forget with great ease. I was discussing with a close friend who recently went through a break up, she said it was horrible because she kept having all these ''movies'' of beautiful memories with her ex. She couldn't control them, and it made the break up much harder for her to go through. I never had to deal with this, breakups are awful, but they never were that bad to handle. Trying to see the positive in all this...