{"id":6815,"date":"2020-11-01T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T03:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=6815"},"modified":"2020-12-12T22:49:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T03:49:46","slug":"prose-of-pagnosia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2020\/11\/prose-of-pagnosia\/","title":{"rendered":"Prose of Pagnosia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

My face-blindness is a fucking cartoon. Even if i know to watch for someone, I don’t recognize them if they change their hair, their dress, their posture, their accent. If I see someone who looks vaguely similar, I’m like, am I going mad? Did they always look like that?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s bad enough with, say, actors in a TV show. Where things really get strange is with people I know in real life\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven people I really should<\/em> be able to recognize, like my parents or my (now ex-)spouse, right. But, welp<\/em>! Brain has other ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Say I’ve known you for thirty years; see you on the regular. Then you show up where I don’t expect you\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmaybe wearing a new hat? My brain: who the everlasting fuck is<\/strong> this, and why are they talking to me like they know me<\/em> Though I should add, if you talk in your normal voice, I’m likely to figure it out in a minute. Voices, I’m okay with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With my ex-spouse, they’d do their hair differently and I had to just stare. Was that really them<\/em>, I wondered. It had to be, right? Was this some sort of a trick? I felt like I was talking to a completely different person; like someone else had been swapped in. It freaked me out, put me on edge. Anyone could claim to be them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once at\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhen I was a teenager there were these strange, depressing parties held for dial-up BBS meet-ups. There was a girl; we were in this weird nebulous relationship, and I think she eventually lost patience with me and my aroace dithering. (Not for the last time!) Once as I arrived at one of these shindigs, a person who looked not at all <\/em>like her, but had kind of similar hair, ran up to me and hugged me for some reason\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I was freaking out. It’s not just the unwanted contact. It was my brain, going, fuck fuck is this actually her? Did she always look like this? Why do I not remember?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scene was weirder still in that I don’t think I knew that person at the time. so I don’t know what she thought she was doing. Maybe she had the same problem as I?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, like. You can see how I always have felt like reality is shifting under my feet, like I’m living in some kind of a dream. Nothing feels nailed down to me, or to act along any kind of consistent rational logic. And here we’re just talking faces<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holy shit, reality is hard. I can tell you, this is part of why I have never felt motivated to do recreational drugs. The effect I am promised there, that’s the opposite of what my head needs. I don’t need perception to get blown open, man. I need to be able to consistently wake up and expect that I’m living in the same universe as yesterday, which it almost never does<\/em>. Everything is new to me all the time. There’s no history and reasoning to any of it, and it’s so fucking hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is to say, historically speaking. From recent experience, I feel like Azure has an easier time of it than her predecessor. It’s still hard for me at times, but by God I’ve never felt this rooted. They <\/em>sure never did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between the above and my inability to remember names, you can see the how social situations might threaten to wash over me, carry my sanity away with a hiccup and a gurgle\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven before we get into, like, social mores and performance and expectations, and having no idea what anyone means or what they think I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s scary, man. I don’t know how people do it. I guess their brains just work right, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me? Why, I get violent anxiety attacks. It’s rad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then people scream at me for embarrassing them by having an anxiety attack. Which helps a lot. Remember what to do if anyone you love happens to be in distress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ha ha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, that’s why I never talk to anybody ever. The end.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My face-blindness is a fucking cartoon. Even if i know to watch for someone, I don’t recognize them if they change their hair, their dress, their posture, their accent. If I see someone who looks vaguely similar, I’m like, am I going mad? Did they always look like that? It’s bad enough with, say, actors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1156,1139,1096,511],"class_list":["post-6815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-azure","tag-mental-health","tag-neurology","tag-social-anxiety","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6815"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6915,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions\/6915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}