Another excerpt from my book – Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere. It’s about having Hyperphantasia (myself) and Aphantasia (my husband), about living with both and the differences we have noticed between the two.

Chapter – Labels

There are many labels given to things and people. They don’t need to cause people to be excluded, singled out or make them seem different in a bad way. Unfortunately though they are often in the minority, so they are left out or excluded. Maybe it’s easier for society to treat people like that rather than accept and help to understand. Although it makes me wonder how we ever made it this far with that kind of attitude.

Example: At school I had a friend who was severely dyslexic, his writing was like a scribble, and the teachers treated him as though he was thick. What I saw was a clever boy with an aptitude for computers when they were just coming into schools. Not very good at writing and who got bored in class quickly leading to what they called ‘acting up’. It bothered me they didn’t care or have the time and resources to deal with differences, whatever they were. I noticed lots of bright people, but they didn’t fit the curriculum so they were singled out and treated differently, not in a positive way usually. They couldn’t be what the system wanted.

This seemed to lead to developing behaviours and characteristics I felt may not have been there otherwise. As goes the saying, if you tell a child they are stupid long enough, they might just start believing it. People are very easily to influence and manipulate given the right tools and environment, school being a perfect place for this.

This belief of mine was compounded further by reading a certain book. I did not stumble across this book by accident. It was handed to me by my Grandmother from her personal bookshelf. She could see what I was interested in and was a clinical psychologist by trade herself. I took the book and kept it on my bookshelf for years, many years. It was only unfortunately after my grandmother passed away at the age of 90 a few years ago, that I actually opened the book. And for me it was a game changer.

All of my theories about how society controls, manipulates and conspires against us were confirmed. We were all pretty much an experiment of some sort. For decades now processes and systems had been put in place and executed for a systematic overhaul of who we are and how we are meant to be. This book – The People Shapers by Vance Packard was a revelation to me that someone else had so concisely worded and researched exactly what I had thought. But he knew the people doing it and reading the details of what I had thought, made me feel sick. Because it was so much worse. As if the eugenicists had infiltrated every level of society and decided everyone was defective in some way. Not that we were just different. I could see this was both harmful and damaging to society, not helpful at all. What I didn’t understand initially though is that this all creates industry and profit. However much I would like to think the powers that be want to help people, they only want to for profit.

This book was first published in 1977 which made me aware that I was living in the repercussions of those times. Pretty much all of these projects he had written about either had already been rolled out or were in the following decades.

I had recognised some of these issues at quite a young age before I got to this book. Had already began to engage in learning about the Theory of Mind before I knew what it was. Through various circumstances I saw more than maybe most by twenty and was taught how to fit in, that you had to comply and be what society wants. Keep your head down, do what they say and try and get on. It took me years of trying and working hard to get it, but I knew what I was looking for. I had a plan.

Around me I saw most people did not understand what was being done to them, did not have a plan and instead seemed quite lost. Either in themselves or within society which demands and dictates at a pace that most people really aren’t quipped for, let alone comfortable with.

I complied more than most, but I was steered by my grandparents who managed to override or interrupt my parents having more influence over me. They taught me to fit in and how to comply, what I needed to do to have some kind of easy life, because if you didn’t, it wouldn’t be made easy for you. I am extremely grateful now for this overview they had, obviously being of a time when all of these societal changes were being implemented and at the helm of some of them.

Another interest I developed along the way, which I felt was necessary to my understanding, was social history. Possibly not interesting to others, my research included the history of taxes, benefits, mental health, criminal laws and medicine. Trying to understand how we go to this point, what rules and laws we had along the way that led to now and the world we have created around us. Knowing how and why we got to this point meant everything to me, without those I felt blind.

I have suffered the usual labels along the way too, and again having some of these ‘given’ to me, led me to want to understand them even more. To understand the impact these mental processes can have on a person, and how just the word or label can destroy someone. Alongside these ‘labels and categories’ though comes industry, pharmaceuticals and money. Lots of money. So I can see why it might be easier to keep looking at the cure rather than the cause.

Through various issues at home and in life – I have had the following labels – clinical depression, a mental breakdown, PTSD, stress headaches, potential anorexia, normal depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, dissociation disorder, separation anxiety and a behavioural disorder.

All this around the ages of fourteen to sixteen. I was having a tough life I don’t deny it, and I seek no sympathy for it, it was what it was. I cannot help looking back though and really questioning their motive for overloading an already troubled mind with all of that. I felt bitter towards the authorities at the time that they would do that to someone, a child no less. I had some counselling and they tried to put me on antidepressants. That didn’t work out and I didn’t take them, I did however find the need for them years later with a number of repeat episodes periodically throughout my twenties. Like I said, life can be hard. I now realise this doesn’t automatically mean you are mentally ill. This could mean you are having a normal reaction to something that isn’t right and needs addressing, not supressing.

It was because these things had labels and were well established that I was able to look into them. To try and work them out using the only test subject I could ever really get the truth from. Myself. Given that we humans are predisposed to self-denial, even then the truth can be skewed but the best you can get sometimes.

Over the years my bitterness turned to anger, because I knew they were doing it to others. I was not going to accept these conditions or disorders as who I was, I decided I wanted to work out how they came about. I did not have to look far. It was quite obvious where the problems were, at home. Text book stuff really. There were eating disorders, mental illness, drug addiction and parental absences during my childhood, of which I didn’t pay much attention, or so I thought.

But all of these factors, people and environments in my life have played their part to shape me, to determine how I ended up like this.

A few years into my 30’s a curve ball appeared when I met my husband. We met, we fell in love and we married within 8 months. Simple. It wasn’t for about a year or so after that I noticed there were differences I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I had always prided myself on being able to work out how someone thinks, if I spend enough time with them and watch their methods, it can be done. But I wasn’t able to work out my own husband. It started to frustrate me. He would make what appeared to be flippant comments, sarcasm with no thought for my feelings, he couldn’t understand why I talked about my past so much.

I just put these things down to a difference of personality and lifestyle previously. It was never done with any malice or intended offence, and because he is extremely loving as a person towards me, caring and bright as well as mostly logical. It confused me why he was like that. There seemed no basis for it and he seemed confused when I wanted to know why. He just simply said he didn’t understand why I felt the need to talk about my past all the time. He found it weird I could remember the year I did something, or thought something. That I seemed to have an attachment to things and activities. (Movies, books, hobbies, interests), things from past that in his opinion I should have let go of.

That where I found it odd. I had been surrounded by people my whole life who weren’t like him, who appreciated their past and memories, even if sometimes they weren’t the best. Still I couldn’t put my finger on it, why did he think my way of thinking was so strange? I found it maddening, I kept trying to work out what it was. Why did he see things so very differently from me, and more to the point, why did he feel the need to tell me all the time? I couldn’t get him to understand why it was actually quite hurtful to tell someone their past is irrelevant and has no meaning. Which made me think there really was something else going on. It wasn’t personal, he genuinely felt like that about everyone.

It took nearly another year to find the culprit and only happened because I was not willing to let it all go. I also write horror fiction and it was this that bought it all to a head. He didn’t see the point of fiction, didn’t understand why people needed constant escapism and didn’t think it really had a relevant place in society. Red flag raised and cue internal rage. Reading books and watching films have saved me from myself many a time and made my childhood more bearable. To think someone didn’t believe there was a place for this saddened me very much and I felt it needed correcting. How could he have married a fiction writer if he thought it was pointless? It was crazy to me.

Instead of jumping straight in and having an argument about it, I though it through. Thought about things he had told me about his past and childhood – only because I asked him specific questions. Some of which were a surprise or couldn’t be answered as he hadn’t stored the information. One comment had stuck with me when talking about playing as children and he had said

“I couldn’t do what they did, they seemed to ‘Go Cartoon’, and I couldn’t”.

I realised this probably meant he didn’t do make believe and just wasn’t interested. As an adult I get it, but to say you were that way as a child made me realise there must be more to it.

It took hours of questions and talking to try and get my head round what it was that was so fundamentally different, no-one I had ever met had this view – and I have come across some very different opinions and view on things in my time and travels. It only took one sentence in the end to break all this open, when I finally worked out what I needed to say.

“You do realise that when people like me read a book, we see pictures in our head don’t you?”

“No”.

And there it was. The bombshell, the game changer – in fact, the life changer. But it was now something I could work with and instantly took to the oracle (google), to find out what this was. I found it pretty quickly and was excited to know this was a thing, he wasn’t weird, I wasn’t weird, we were just different. The excitement was short lived for me and was non-existent for him. This was a label he didn’t want and one that would both take us quite some time to get our head around.

(c) K Wicks