Amy Wilburn

I was in the Mensa subreddit on Reddit, a week and a half ago, when I saw a poll asking Mensa members to confide whether they were aphantasic or not. I had no idea what the word meant. Someone in the comment section of the post told people that if they could picture a purple elephant on a tightrope they weren’t aphantasic. I woke up my sleeping husband next to me and asked him if he could picture such an elephant. He drowsily said, “yes,” and went back to sleep. I thought he was delirious with sleep… Finding out a few hours later, when my husband of 42 years was actually awake, that he — and in fact most of the world (according to some internet research) — can absolutely visualize a purple elephant on a tightrope at will BLEW MY MIND! I couldn’t sleep the entire night after learning about this. EVERYONE doesn’t see complete blackness in their mind’s eye?!?! What alternate universe is this that I’ve stumbled into at 60 years of age?

The majority’s experience with being able to visualize does seem way more bizarre to me than my experience of seeing nothing but the blackness of the inside of my eyelids. Especially since it’s taken me 60 long years to learn about aphantasia, and that when people say they are picturing something they literally mean that they’re picturing something. I mean — like in the movie “The Sixth Sense” — most people could say that they see dead people. Weird. (I have to say, though, that I’m jealous that most people can visualize the loved ones they’ve lost.)