If a stranger less strange than I were to see me looking up and down a restaurant menu when I'm not hungry, or staring at an airport's departure times for flights I won't be on, they'd (probably) think I'm high. But I'm (probably) not, at least not in the drug sense; I'm probably just slightly more entertained, or at least occupied, than I would be otherwise. This is thanks to a little thing called "synesthesia" that has blessed (and cursed) my life with convenient distractions within my own head that require very little work.
Synesthesia is an innate mingling of specific senses so that one is almost always accompanied by the other based on unique and unusual overlapping functions of the brain. Which senses mingle varies from person to person; what unites them under one phenomenon is that it’s a stable sensation with no other probable cause (and also that they’re cool and/or sexy, and very interesting people who write good).
It still consistently surprises me how many people are brand new to the idea when I bring it up in conversation, not only that they don't have it, but why haven't they even heard of it by now? After all, [quickly searches on an increasingly unreliable search engine] an estimated 4% of people experience it; but if so many people don’t know what it is, how do they know if they don't have it? Maybe it’s subtle, or it’s mixing things that can be similar enough to write off (like someone with a tactile/musical sensation pairing thinking “smooth jazz” is literal). It would make for much more interesting conversations if people would share their crossed paths of sensation, if for no other purpose than for slightly less awkward segues for me to share mine. (Though the awkwardness will eventually come back when I autistically overexplain myself anyway.) It's inconceivable to me that our senses, as defined to teach us as children not to eat things that smell nice, actually work in such a set way for 24 out of 25 people.
Well. I don’t have many people around me to share this with, but I do have my own website where I can put anything I want.
I was very young when I started to get ~insomnia~, a recurring character in many of my quirks and major life problems, and sleep hygiene experts who shake their heads at my habits now would be horrified to see how deep into my personal history it goes. Digital alarm clocks may have seemed cool in 1990 compared to analogue ones, but they were perhaps neither wise nor necessary in the bedroom of a child. It wasn’t the illumination that bothered me – I had a night light plugged into the wall too – but the numbers. Counting sheep would be no help either, I suppose, as my imagination did more of the damage than glowing light. I could either see or just think of numbers, and my mind would start a) doing math (with an unusually high aptitude for it, but only for my age), and b) seeing colours in my head that would shine at me, eyes closed or open.
These were separate things springing from different parts of my unpindownable brain (which could be several other essays, several other days, if I could only pin them down), though the math part led my unrelatedly(?) active imagination to assign Vibes to numbers as well. But the colours just were. They just are – it’s remained consistent throughout my life, as synesthesia crossovers tend to do. The mix of my math skills and my colour association, though, has helped me paint a worldview of association that impacts my relationship to both numbers and colours.
I frame this worldview by putting single-digit numbers into three groups, based on their relationships to, well, the number three:
Sometimes people will respond to me explaining this that I’m wrong, actually, because they’ve always associated [number] with [colour] because [reason that’s not synesthesia, and even if it were it would be unique to them, yet there cannot be subjectivity in language because truth is weakness or whatever fucking rule these people have in their heads]. I can’t do paint-by-numbers puzzles, not only because it doesn’t actually engage me mentally with anything, but it also makes my eyes twitch when the assignments in a particular puzzle are so, so off. It’s entertaining enough for me to simply imagine the colours myself.
Longer numbers make these colours change in proportion to one another and can sometimes blend like mixed paint, but it’s not exactly by any discernible equation. It also depends on the length of the number. Three to five digits can look like the colour swatches you find in fashion magazines or showrooms for interior design. Numbers longer than that can end up looking like a scenic painting of varying clarity. If I won the lottery and you asked me my net worth, I’d probably say I’d have to research Impressionist art and get back to you on that. (And proceed to not get back to you on that, out of both forgetfulness and the fact it's none of your fucking business.)
So how, you’re most certainly not asking but I’m going to fucking tell you anyway, does this affect my daily life? I work with a lot of numbers (thanks to my other gifts of not just math skills but ADHD and anxiety (another essay, another day) requiring that I be always solving some kind of puzzle to be able to breathe) so to get any actual work done I often have to filter this perceptual gift out of my mind. But when I'm not being paid to focus, I can turn it back on for fun, and sometimes when it looks like I have nothing to do but twiddle my fingers, I’m thinking of the colours of large numbers around me. My employee number at work looks like an art teacher told a goth to “add colour” to their paintings. My personal phone number looks like a piss-soaked jersey for the Edmonton Oilers with a little grass stain on the elbow. The month and day of my date of birth is like a little pink flower amongst the grass, while the year is an old sweater hand-knit by the grandmother of someone who is only wearing it decades later because they are deeply depressed.
I'm sure other people have their own set of things to keep their minds busy with in idle moments (or in busy moments when they'd rather be idle), like food they want to try to make, or celebrity gossip, or doing a kind act for a loved one. But for me, if you see me sitting there doing seemingly nothing yet not being bored, don't worry about it. I'm probably thinking about numbers.