Hello, Darkness: Life with Aphantasia

GRAPHIC: JR HERMAN, PHOTO: ZACHARY LUTZKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE

I have aphantasia, the complete inability to visualize.

If you tell me to close my eyes and imagine an apple, all I will see is black. It’s not that I don’t know what an apple is — I can recognize apples just as well as the next person (weird flex?). But if you ask me to “picture” or “imagine” an apple, at no point do I see one in my mind. I think to myself the word “apple,” know that it is round, red or green, that it has a stem and a sticker if it’s from the grocery store. So yes, before you ask, I know what an apple looks like.

It’s not just apples, either. Ask me to imagine trees, the Wren Building, squirrels, my childhood home, my own face, even. If I close my eyes, no matter how hard I try to “imagine,” no matter how long I stare beforehand, trying to memorize every detail, I will only see black.

If you’re in the 98% who can visualize (and have never heard of aphantasia), you’re probably thinking, “That’s a thing?” You probably can’t imagine life without being able to visualize.

If you’re in the 2% who can’t visualize (and have never heard of aphantasia), you’re probably thinking, “That’s not how everyone thinks?” You probably can’t imagine life being able to visualize.

I was one month shy of my 21st birthday when I realized that I had aphantasia. That the way I experience the world — my normal, which I just assumed was everyone’s normal — was far from the norm.

Growing up, certain things never made sense. Something here, something there, but never enough for me to really start asking questions.

I am a child and cannot sleep. “Count sheep,” my mom suggests. “Or imagine you’re on a beach.” I try “counting sheep” by thinking, one sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four sheep. I imagine being on a beach by thinking, I am on a beach. There are no sheep jumping fences, no flip-flops in the sand — there is only blackness narrated by my inner voice. I think to myself, this is a really dumb way to fall asleep. I wonder how it works for anyone.

I am in middle school, reading poetry in English class. “It’s so vivid, I can literally see it in my head,” someone says. I think to myself, what kind of B.S. brown-nosing is this?

I am a senior in high school. My Calculus teacher is making fun of me for writing out every step of the equation, for turning in three, four, five extra sheets of paper with each test. “Just do the little steps in your head,” she says. “It’s easier.”

“I can’t,” I say.

“What do you mean, you can’t? You just move the numbers over in your head.”

I am a sophomore in college. I tell my mom about this cute guy who hit on me after class.

“What does he look like?” she asks.

“He’s really cute. He’s got brown hair.”

“And?”

“He has a mustache. And he’s fit.” My mom keeps pressing me for details I can’t give. 

“Just replay it in your head.”

“I can’t,” I say.

“Try to pay more attention next time. Don’t be so nervous.

“Ok,” I say. “I’ll try.” I go to his Instagram to find his picture.

It’s the summer before my junior year. I have an entertaining dream and tell my friend about it. “Wouldn’t it be cool if people could actually daydream like they dream at night? Like literally see it in your head and all, you know?”

My friend doesn’t understand. I try to re-explain, to no avail. “Never mind,” I say.

I google it and find an old Quora post about this thing called aphantasia. I decide I couldn’t have gone my whole life not realizing there was something wrong with me. I’m “normal.” Plus, I know what an apple looks like. I close out of the tab and forget about it.

It’s Fall 2022, and I am a junior. It’s the first day of classes, and I’m taking Psychology as a Natural Science for my COLL 200 NQR requirement. We begin by learning memorization strategies and study techniques to help us ace the upcoming semester’s material. “Visualization is one of the best ways to remember information,” the professor lectures, suggesting that we take what we want to learn and transform it into a mental image. Our textbook suggests the same. With study strategies like that, no wonder so many people get terrible grades, I think.

A month and a half later, our professor is lecturing about dreams. I get distracted on my laptop and end up on the same Quora page. This time, though, I take the test.

JR HERMAN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE

1. Close your eyes.

2. Imagine a red apple.

3. Open your eyes. Which number best represents what you saw in your “mind’s eye?”

The last option. Nothing. The abyss. I do five more tests. Nothing. The abyss.

I still don’t entirely believe it. I tell my psychology professor after class that I read there’s this thing called aphantasia and that I think I may have it. I ask him if people can actually “see” things in their minds. He says yes. I thank him and leave.

I make my closest friends take the aphantasia test, this one with a red square instead of an apple. Every single one sees the square. Every single one. I wonder if they don’t understand the instructions. Are they just thinking of a red square, but not actually seeing it?

“Are you sure you’re doing it right? Like, you actually see that, not just know what a red square looks like?”

“Yeah, of course I see it??????” they respond.

I wonder if they’re gaslighting me for the hell of it. That’s when I tell them that I can’t see it. They think I’m gaslighting them. When they realize I’m serious, I’ve been transformed into some sort of circus freak. “You can think, right?” one of them asks, not joking.

“Yes, I am able to think,” I reply, somewhat offended.

That night, we have a magazine photoshoot. “This picture will be living in my mind rent-free,” one of my friends says. I don’t say anything but think about it for the rest of the night, still in shock.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

The next day, I go to my 11 a.m. class and talk with another friend.

“I just found out yesterday that I have aphantasia.” I expect him to be concerned that I’m dying of some rare disease he hadn’t heard of, but maybe because he’s pre-med and because his then-girlfriend was a Psych major, he nonchalantly says that his girlfriend was trying to convince him the other day that he had it, but he didn’t believe her. I make him take the test.

“I know what an apple is, JR.” He rolls his eyes.

“So do I,” I say. “But can you see it in your head?” He shakes his head no. “Look at my face right now, then close your eyes. Can you see it? Imagine your parents’ faces? Your own face? Can you SEE them?”

“No.”

“Then you have it,” I say.

When I see him next class, he tells me he couldn’t stop thinking about it the whole day, couldn’t focus, couldn’t study. Mourned the entire day, just like I had. Months later, I text him one night, asking if he ever asked his family if they had it too — he decided against it because he didn’t want to “introduce them to the horror of it💀.”

Sometimes I feel guilty for dragging him along on the Aphantasia Express, but it’s nice to know someone else who understands all the things that never made sense. To vent, to complain, to wonder, to laugh, to imagine (without pictures) together. What are the odds? Same orientation group, two classes together, both among the 2% with aphantasia, all by chance.

We both could have gone our entire lives not knowing, which, if I had to bet, is probably the case for most with aphantasia. After all, we’ve spent our entire lives in our own minds, assuming that our normal is “normal,” when really, our normal is something most don’t even know is even possible. “Picture this,” “my life flashed before my eyes,” “visualize,” “mind’s eye,” and “looks different in my head” were, to me, just figures of speech. 

It surprised me how all of my friends apologized when they found out, like aphantasia is such a terrible, terrible thing.

 “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what that’s like,” my friend with diabetes says. I simultaneously feel both privileged and pitiful. I’m so sorry that he has to watch what he eats, that he has to prick his finger, that he has to get shots all the time. I can’t imagine what that’s like, how hard it is, but he says it’s ok, that he just feels bad for me.

“Don’t worry about me — it’s not that bad,” I say, trying to make him (and maybe myself) feel better. “Aphantasia is just a different way of experiencing the world. Not necessarily good. Not necessarily bad, you know? Plus, I’ve never known any different. It’s my normal. Don’t really know any better.”

Most of the time though, I do feel like I’m missing out. I will never understand what it means to “daydream,” will never create a world in my head, and will never “see” what you’re describing, no matter how vivid the language is. I can recognize but will never recall a face from memory, whether it’s that of my seventh-grade crush, my best friend, my parents, my future husband, or my future child. My own. If I don’t have a photo and it’s not in front of my eyes, it’s gone unless I dream it.

So, most days, I do wish I didn’t have aphantasia. But sometimes I wonder.

If it weren’t for aphantasia, would I even have been the same person I am now?

Would I have been a writer? Would I have loved languages like I do? Would I be just as good at banter? I can’t help but wonder if my love for words was shaped, subconsciously, by my inability to visualize. A by-product, perhaps. I couldn’t count sheep, so I conjugated French verbs. Je sais. Tu sais. Il/elle/on sait. Nous savons. Vous savez. Ils/elles savent. Fell asleep to French lyrics running through my head, to poetry, story plots, “daydreams” that read like scripts. Compensation, perhaps.

If I could choose to know or not know (savoir ou ne pas savoir?), I would choose knowing. Now, I know my strengths and my limitations, and why some things just never made sense. Why I am the way I am. The knowledge, though, is bittersweet, tinged with what I now know I’m missing, imagining what I cannot imagine.

When I close my eyes, you might as well play Simon & Garfunkel.

Hello, darkness, my old friend.