Previously friendly-neighborhood-imbecille

Didn’t get diagnosed, I just finally heard it described by someone else with it. For the longest time I thought that it was something else entirely because of how it was depicted, but hearing about it from someone who was diagnosed and hearing them describe it exactly how I usually do, but with cloves of garlic instead of trees made me realize holy shit I actually have it.

If you want to know what it’s like, it definitely isn’t like those pictures you see with the horrific slenderman people everywhere.

I don’t know what it’s like on the more extreme end, but at least on the mild end for faceblindness, you can definitely see everybody’s face. But there isn’t a thing in your brain telling you to recognize it more than other stuff just because it’s a face.

Like, imagine you’re introduced to an oak tree. Then three more oak trees. Then the next day, you’re expected to be able to differentiate them. It’ll be difficult at first, but eventually you’ll be able to see that this one looks a little bit different from that one.

Now imagine one of those oak trees is suddenly in your front yard. Ignoring the craziness of a tree appearing out of thin air, would you be able to tell it’s the same tree you know from that other location?

Now imagine that a tree that has been in your front yard for years and years and years shows up in the Walmart parking lot. You’ve seen this tree so many times, you can recognize it immediately even though it’s in an unexpected location.

If I look at a picture of Robert Downey Jr. I immediately know who that is because I’ve seen the Avengers movies and he looks the pretty much the same in those as everywhere else. I can recognize Tom Holland because for the longest time so many people were obsessed with him, so I was seeing pictures of him everywhere.

I once saw a collage though that somebody made of their favourite actors, and wondered why the same guy was on there twice. It was Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans both with short beards and short hair. I can’t immediately recognize Scarlett Johansson unless she has red hair.

If I see a picture of Jim Henson, I have no idea who he is unless he’s got Kermit with him or he’s in a Muppet workshop or something like that.

I can immediately recognize Daniel Radcliffe or Elijah Woods, but I thought Dumbledore and Gandalf were played by the same person for so long. I remember arguing with my siblings about this as a kid.

If I saw anyone I’m currently friends with at the supermarket, I would know it was them. My physics lab partner once wished me luck before my chemistry exam, and even though we would spend the entirety of physics lab yapping at each other, the second she was in my chemistry class I could not figure out who she was.

One of the cashiers at PetSmart that I always talk to while buying guinea pig food and crickets showed up as a customer to my job today, and in my head I was like “that guy looks so familiar, I can’t figure it out. Is he a comedy YouTuber or something?” it took me five minutes to realize who he was and I see him almost every week.

I know what a lot of my online friends look like, but I would not be able to recognize them if we were in the same area unless either I already knew they were gonna be there, or they noticed me first and came to say hi. And I still might not recognize them initially for that second option.

And wow was it difficult keeping track of groups of people when I was a host at a restaurant. There would be a group of four, two people would go to the bathroom, then I couldn’t tell it was the same group.

I think I have this kind of dream often because of my enjoyment of like, Danny Phantom, Blue Exorcist, and Astro Boy 2009. Like, the whole hunted down by humans thing is pretty prominent in that kind of story.

Usually I can feel the emotions of the pov character, and control what they do, as if I were him, but there’s a disconnect and I don’t feel scared of the situation, but instead excited to see what happens next.

Bro looks traumatized