{"id":268,"date":"2020-02-07T09:59:52","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T09:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=268"},"modified":"2020-03-01T15:16:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T15:16:24","slug":"my-blind-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/my-blind-mind\/268\/","title":{"rendered":"My Blind Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you picture her face?\u201d My words tumbled out of my mouth as soon as my sister picked up the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHuh? Whose face?\u201d Evelyn replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMum\u2019s,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At sixty years old, I had just learned that\nmost people possessed a superpower. They could visualise objects, places,\nevents and people in their \u201cmind\u2019s eye\u201d. I could not. Suddenly the darkness of\nmy mind seemed blinding. What\u2019s more, I felt the loss of my mother more acutely\nthan ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our mother had died six months earlier, after a\nlong battle with cancer. Evelyn and I had nursed her until the end. Now there\nwas a gaping hole in my life. It was Larry, my husband, who had suggested\ngiving meditation a go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cPicture yourself on a beach,\u201d said the\ninstructor that morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere we go,\u201d I thought. Imagination wasn\u2019t my\nthing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards, I was rushing to leave, when I\noverheard people comparing their beaches. Some described exotic palm trees, others\nspoke of rugged cliffs beneath moody skies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut\u2026 it\u2019s just a metaphor, right? You can\u2019t\nactually see<\/em> the beach.\u201d I\ninterrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, they could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So could Larry, I discovered when I got home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mind was blown. An hour of furious googling\nrevealed that I am one of approximately two per cent of the population living\nwith \u201cAphantasia\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it hit me like a bus. Other people could\nsee their loved ones\u2019 faces. Even if they were dead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you mean, Viv?\u201d said Evelyn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you see her, in your mind?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course!\u201d She was laughing now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I burst into tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evelyn rushed straight round. All afternoon, we\nstared at photographs of our mother, Evelyn trying desperately to coach me to\nform an image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExplain it more clearly!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re just not concentrating hard enough!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try as I might, my mind was blank. There HAD to\nbe a way to switch the lights on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I contacted Professor Alice Eksteen, Lead\nNeurologist in the field of Aphantasia. She invited me to take part in her\nresearch study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I feared, the results of my brain scans\nconfirmed that my visual cortex does not activate when I imagine things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow do I fix this?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVivian, Aphantasia isn\u2019t a disorder or\nsomething that can be \u201cfixed.\u201d It\u2019s a different way of perceiving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I joined an online support group. There I met\nother \u201cAphants\u201d like me, who described being rooted in the present, instead of pulled\ninto the past or future by distracting images. That\u2019s our superpower. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I wanted\n<\/em>to picture the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know what I see most of the time, when I\nthink about her?\u201d Evelyn said, her voice cracking, \u201cI see her dying and in\npain. It\u2019s haunting, Viv. Believe me, you\u2019re blessed to be spared this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We opened the family album. Mum would always be\nimmortalised here, whenever I wanted to \u201csee\u201d her. Instead, I held an inner\nsense of her presence. Warm and comforting, like a hug. I embraced the internal\ndarkness that enabled this feeling. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCan you picture her face?\u201d My words tumbled out of my mouth as soon as my sister picked up the phone. \u201cHuh? Whose face?\u201d Evelyn replied. \u201cMum\u2019s,\u201d I said. At sixty years old, I had just learned that most people possessed a superpower. They could visualise objects, places, events and people in their \u201cmind\u2019s eye\u201d. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[121,164],"tags":[171,169,95,7,168,12,9,170,11],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-121","category-desire","tag-could","tag-evelyn","tag-had","tag-her","tag-mind","tag-my","tag-said","tag-see","tag-was"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-4k","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}