Monday, November 20, 2017

Broken Glass (short fiction)

i have to put away the dishes it's one of my chores and to save time i grab a handful of forks and spoons at once but i'm clumsy and one spoon drops from my hand onto the floor but i'm able to pick it up before she sees it. i wipe it off and put it in the drawer and i'm able to put away the bowls okay but when i go to grab a glass it's still a little wet on the outside and it slips and then it's on the floor in a dozen pieces and she heard it break and now i'm in trouble because there's no way to hide it.

WHAT DID YOU DO THIS TIME she stomps in the kitchen with a loud sigh and says YOU ARE ALWAYS MAKING MESSES FOR ME TO CLEAN UP!  

no, i'm not! and it was an accident. i can clean it up if she'll let me but she never does. whenever i spill something or break something she jumps on top of it and won't let me help, but she yells all the time that i "make" her clean up messes. but that's not true, i don't make messes on purpose, i can't help it, it just happens.

and i try to say "i didn't mean to, it was an accident, let me clean it up" but when she's mad i know i'm in trouble and i get scared and i stutter so it comes out "i-- i-- it-- i-- di--"

GOD YOU ARE USELESS she says. I AM ALWAYS CLEANING UP YOUR MESS.

i don't know what to do and she won't let me near the broken glass, she blocks it with her body and with the trash can and broom. i don't make her mad on purpose, i don't drop things on purpose. i don't want her to be mad.

"i-- i-- le-- le--" i'm trying to say, let me clean it up, so she won't be mad anymore. "le-- let--"

SPIT IT OUT!  she screams in my face like she always does when i can't get the words out, and that makes everything worse, now i can't speak at all and it's hard for me to breathe. i start to cry because i don't know why she's so mean to me all the time, and i'm gonna get the hiccups soon, and when i cry snot runs out of my nose and down to my mouth and my whole face is wet and it tastes bad when i lick my lips. when she sees it she screams WIPE YOUR FACE YOU'RE DISGUSTING WHY CAN'T YOU GROW UP YOU'RE SO HELPLESS GOD WHY DO I HAVE TO HAVE A DAUGHTER LIKE YOU.

and now i'm crying so hard i can't do anything until i stop crying and can breathe normal again. but by then of course the glass is all cleaned up and she wouldn't let me show her that i could clean it up myself. she said the whole time that i "made" her clean it up.

so i put away the rest of the dishes extra carefully and then i look carefully on the floor for any missed bits of broken glass, because if someone cuts their foot it will be my fault because i'm so clumsy and i can't do anything right.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Musings of an Alien Anthropologist Among the Human Race

It's Friday night and I'm sitting here thinking about how there's so much I don't understand about other people...mostly cultural stuff (marriage, weddings, religion) but also biological stuff (the desire to have children) and, why do so many people fear death? etc.

I realized long ago that I'll never understand the why behind why other people believe and want certain things, and I have to chalk it up to my brain being wired differently than the majority of other humans. And it's difficult for me to articulate questions without sounding judgmental.

You can tell me that religion gives you answers or makes you feel comforted, and on an intellectual level I can understand that answer, but I don't fully comprehend it because I've never felt a need for answers or comfort. So I still wonder "but WHY do you need/want/believe, though?"

You can tell me that you've always wanted kids, or try to claim that it's driven by biology, but I'm a biological human and I've never felt any desire or compulsion to procreate. It's like my brain doesn't recognize my body as even being capable of such an act. I can only think of it in abstract terms. I understand the biology, but even though my organs function normally, something's different in the way my brain is wired. It's wired to find the idea of child-bearing almost...offensive, if not outright horrifying and repulsive. The same way people know whether they're straight or gay, is how I've always known I will not get married or have kids. It's not even a choice I made, it's something I've always known, since childhood. So I find it bizarre that people choose to do those things. You can tell me why you did, and what it means to you, but your answers aren't answers I can comprehend.


Basically, I can't grok it.

That doesn't mean I don't respect your religion or your marriage or your family. I just often feel like an alien anthropologist living among the human race and being puzzled by why you do and believe various things.

Like, why do people fear death? Maybe this ties in with my inability to understand the need for religion: Everything dies, and once you're dead, you're dead. In death there is no ability to regret things you did or didn't do in life. You have no consciousness; there is no such thing as an afterlife. But billions of people don't believe that. I'll respect their beliefs as long as they're not harmful to anyone. But I'll never understand why people feel the need to seek answers or believe in a higher power or follow a religion. 

So, with this in mind, I gave up trying to figure out people years ago. There's so much I'll never understand about them. As long as there's a mutual "live and let live" philosophy, we generally get along though.

Monday, February 27, 2017

Sorry, I Don't Know You: Adventures in Face-Blindness

You may have heard of a condition called prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. It's when people are unable to recognize or recall people's faces, regardless of how long they've known them. I've suffered from a mild form of this my entire life, but fortunately my affliction is occasional and random. That is, some faces I'll instantly and permanently remember, others take some time to permanently fix in my brain, and other people I could see several times a day but never be able to recall what their face looks like. There's no seeming reason for the discrepancies, but I've noticed trends. I have yet to find an account of anyone who only experiences occasional face-blindness towards certain individuals, so I figured I'd go into detail about what I experience.

Up until a few years ago I didn't know there was a term for this. It was my secret embarrassment that led to a lifetime of awkwardness in school and when meeting new people. I don't know at what age I became aware that I had delays and difficulty recognizing some of my classmates, but usually during the first few weeks of the new school year, if there were new kids I didn't know yet, I had anxiety until my brain finally registered everyone's face. Until that happened, I could never predict whether I'd recognize an unfamiliar classmate the following day. 

If the teacher had divided us into work groups earlier that week, and told us to get into groups with our partners, there was always the small chance that I'd have no idea who my partner was. I could look around the room and rule out the people I obviously knew. But if there were a few new kids that year, I might not be able to recognize them yet, and I wouldn't know who I'd sat next to the previous day. But this would only happen if my brain hadn't yet "fixed" the face in my head. Meaning, once I recognize and know someone, they'll never be unfamiliar to me from that point on. It's just that I never know if and when I'll struggle to remember a new face. It's so frustrating and embarrassing that I can't predict when or if this will happen.

As I said earlier, I've noticed some trends but they're not absolute. If I find you very interesting or attractive, I'm almost always able to immediately fix your face in my head, and I'll never forget you. If you are a rather bland and nondescript person (sorry!) I am likely to have trouble remembering your face. And there are a few people who, no matter how hard I try, just look the same to me and I don't recognize them. There have been weeks or months at a time when I couldn't tell two coworkers or two classmates apart, and then when it suddenly hit me and I could permanently recognize them, I couldn't believe it because they didn't look anything alike. 

Brains are weird.

(I actually like it when people post lots of selfies from different angles and in different lighting, with different facial expressions. I can study the photos and tell myself "Okay, my coworker Jenn can look like this, or this, or this," and that does help if I'm trying to memorize who Jenn is.)

I do want to make a distinction here for those who are confused by the term face-blindness. I often see it "illustrated" by pictures of gray or blurred faces with no eyes or noses or features at all. This is not how I (or how I believe most people with face-blindness) perceive people at all. We are not literally blind. Our prosopagnosia is not related to a vision disorder, and we see every detail of a face just the same way we see every detail of anything else. What we have trouble with is facial recognition. I absolutely see your eyes, nose, lips, etc. Your face is a normal face. I could have a conversation with you, but if you're a stranger who walked away and came back 20 minutes later, there is a small chance I wouldn't recognize you, especially if you changed your shirt or your hair. Your face just wouldn't register as one that I'd just seen.

Fortunately, this is rare for me, and as I've gotten older I've learned to anticipate the possibility of it happening, so I try to pay more attention to the (for lack of a better word) bland or non-descript people I encounter. That's tough. Most people who have prosopagnosia can never recognize a face, even their family or loved ones; instead they learn to use cues such as hairstyle, voice, etc. And this can throw them for a loop if someone shaves a beard or changes their hair. And people with a severe form can't even recognize themselves in a mirror.

One thing I'd like to point out about myself is that I otherwise have a fantastic visual and spatial memory. I can glance at a map and memorize a route in my head, and recall it days later. I can scan an instructional diagram and then build the thing from memory. I know when something has been changed in my familiar surroundings. I keep dream diaries going back to childhood, and just reading descriptions of dreams I had 25 years ago makes me see them in my mind as if I'm experiencing them again. I can visualize and describe in detail memories of events that happened throughout my life. But for some reason, I blank on random people's faces. I don't know if this is at all related to prosopagnosia though. 

Having to fake my way through a conversation with someone who knows me (but whom I do not recognize) was fairly common when I was growing up. Most of my parents' friends looked alike to me and I rarely saw them often enough to pay attention. I know many of them got insulted, and my parents were horribly offended by my seeming lack of interest in their friends. I've never told my parents about my troubles with facial recognition. I've read that it's thought to be genetic, so I wonder if any of my family had it and never talked about it, either.

Interestingly, I've never had any delayed recognition of family members.  

The most frustrating thing is that I can't predict how long it will take before my brain permanently registers your face. As I explained earlier, if you're a visually interesting person with distinguishing features, and I'm paying attention, (and especially if I like you or find you attractive), my brain will register your face immediately and I'll never have trouble recognizing you. But if you're sort of plain, I might be unable to recall your face and spend months confusing you with another person. Eventually it will stick in my brain, but the length of time until it sticks is impossible to predict. 

This can cause a professional embarrassment as well, especially because I work as a receptionist at an animal hospital. We have a few (human) clients who I still struggle to recognize even when they come in every week. If they come in unexpectedly without their pet (for example, to buy dog food or renew a prescription), I might not recognize them. I've had several clients drop their pet off in the morning and then come to pick them up in the evening, and even though I was the one who checked them in, when they come back I don't know who they are. Sometimes it doesn't matter if they've changed clothes over the course of the day or not. I cover myself by asking "Sorry, how do you spell your last name?" so I can look up their file without revealing that I don't recognize them. I'm getting better, though, because I have to force myself to pay attention to voice, height, gait, mannerisms, etc. But it's always a crapshoot until that day they walk in and all of a sudden I know who they are. 
There's no sudden "A-ha!" moment, it just...happens.

I am so thankful that my affliction is mild and that I never fail to recognize someone after that point.

Yeah, brains are weird.