What age do you start remembering what you were like?

I became really self-aware at 11. I’m guessing a bit about being 10, but 6th grade (11-12) is when I feel like I started being the person I still am 20+ years later. Obviously I’ve grown, but it started then.

Probably that I’m alive?

I already dealt with (undiagnosed) chronic depression by 10. The first time I thought about killing myself I don’t think I even knew the word “suicide.” I also had an overwhelming sense that I wouldn’t live past 30. That might not have started until I was 11 or 12, but I think it was there when I was younger.

Weirdly my mom also had an overwhelming sense that she would lose me at a young age from the day I was born, which she didn’t have with my older sister.

Well, I’m past 30 now. My love of people in my life has kept the suicidal ideation to only that. While I still have chronic depression, I’ve learned to manage it better over the years and medication helps.

I genuinely don’t know why I was depressed or had suicidal thoughts that young. I didn’t have a traumatic home or childhood. My parents worked a lot but loved me and my sister without question. We didn’t have a lot of money but always had enough food. I loved school and had great teachers. I wasn’t sexually assaulted before I was 10 (I think I was 12 the first time). I don’t know and that bothers me.

ETA: I guess I was bullied at school by 10, so maybe that accounts for it?

A dear friend of mine went there as well. He was the first trans person I knew, almost 20 years ago now, and I know he loved New College and the support he got through his transition there.

As hard as it is to see this for me, I expect it’s heartbreaking for him, and that makes me sad.

At one point in my childhood, my dad made the comment, “Women don’t know compass directions.” I took offense to that and made a point to learn them to prove him wrong.

I felt vindicated in high school when he was coming to pick me up from a friend’s house and said, “I’m at the gas station. Do I go left or right?” I told him there were several gas stations on the way, and asked which direction he was facing to figure out which one he was by. He couldn’t tell me and finally hung up on me in a huff.

I put down my best friend of 20 years on October 5th and fuck it’s hard. I’m sorry. You know you’re making the caring decision and loving your dog until the end though, and that is a gift.

It’s going to be hard. I’m starting to feel like myself again between the moments of deep grief, but I am still fragile and sad and will be for a long time.

If you ever need comfort from a stranger, feel free to save my name or comment and shoot me a message.

This 1955 featurette interpreted it as re-gifting daily. It ends up being a LOT of birds.

Many people mentioned clearing ALL the snow off your car, but I didn’t see people mentioning why. Here are some videos to elaborate how terrifying and dangerous it can be when people don’t do that.

One, two, three, four

It takes a lot of energy to clear the car off, but it’s critical. Don’t be the person that harms someone else just to save a bit of time and effort.

A DMV is accountable for driving laws and practices in their own state, not educating people about every possible driving condition anywhere.

Wait, are you saying that Virginia not mentioning what to do if a moose is in the road is “bad”?

Considering that the northern-most part of Virginia is still about 350 mi south of the closest range of moose, it would be pointless if not absurd for them to include it.

I’ve definitely talked about ND behaviors within minutes of meeting strangers at parties (either they bring it up or I do about myself, never calling someone else out for it).

I’m a nerd, therefore most of my friends are nerds, and so too are their friends. While I don’t have data to back this up, I believe most nerds are ND (I literally can’t think of any NT folks in my social circle). We tend to be good at pattern recognition, so identifying similar traits when there’s already the confirmation of being friends-of-friends tends to be enough to get into such topics, lol.

Thank you <3

She was the best! My soul pet. I had her for over half my life since she was 4 months old. We had a great life together and I’m so grateful for that, even though losing her leaves a gaping hole in my heart.

Thank you. I’m sorry you’re also caring for an aging pet. It’s hard but they are so, so worth it! Love her and her howls. Try to get pictures and videos of her! And give her an extra head kiss or scritch or whatever she likes best from me, please!

My 20-year-old baby girl insisted I face her as well. She would paw at the back of my head until I rolled over or moved her in front of me. She only started doing that over the past two years or so, but for about five years she would paw at me to lift the covers so she could snuggle under them or to hold her in my arms.

I had to put her to sleep just over two weeks ago on October 5. I miss her waking me up all the time for snuggles. I would trade every night of solid sleep in the world to have her with me still.

Nah, he just saw the guy shake them midway through to keep them from sticking and retained the info that you shake them so they don’t stick, then ignored everything else the guy said.

Do you really think Trump has ever done that kind of work before? Trust fund babies aren’t exactly known for scraping by with food service jobs.

Based on the video, they shake them midway through then just drain at the end. I can’t speak from personal experience but it looked like it worked well for them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even worse than putting it on the hanger—which I could excuse as a first-timer mistake—he was told like 5 times that you don’t need to shake them when they’re done cooking, you just drain them. He took some out and shook, and the trainer corrected him and showed him again how to drain them, then just 10 seconds later Trump is shaking another basket and dumps it out without draining it.

With one parent who turned 80 this year and the second in their late 70s, I’ve realized there’s a difference between “elderly” and “old.” A lot of people equate the two. I think “old” always started in one’s 70s to me, even as a kid. “Elderly,” however, is not based on a number but on a physical state of being.

My dad is elderly. He’s frail and struggling to move around much. It’s hard to watch and it’s been going on and worsening for a few years now. My mom, despite being only 3 years younger, is not at all elderly. She has more energy and vivacity than many people over 20 years her junior (hell I’m in my 30s and she can do loops around me, but I got the chronic illness genes that she didn’t have). Technically, she’s old. But no one who knows her would think of her as “elderly.”

If I think of tasting a lime, my mouth puckers and salivates like I’m about to eat something sour. I could probably say I’m imagining the taste, similar to how you described, like a 1/10.

I think hearing is maybe like that but like 1/100 instead of 1/10? It’s hardest to explain that one because with the stuck song thing, it’s there. I know it’s there. I can’t not imagine the song when it’s stuck. But I don’t “hear” it in any way like my ears hear things?

Smell I can’t imagine at all, but I can usually recognize smells (“usually” because for things that are similar to a memory, like someone wearing the aftershave my dad used as a kid or something that smells like my grandmother’s house from 25 years ago, are likely a miss, but normal things I recognize without question).

Visuals are probably more like smell in that I just don’t have them, but remembering visuals is more critical so I’m better at coping with that one.

I will mention I’ve met people and then instantly forgotten everything about how they looked, like I could only tell you gender and race, but I recognized them when I saw them again. Now, I had context clues. Like I met a couple in a dive shop in town then saw them at the airport on the way to the trip we were both going on through the dive shop. I knew I’d probably see them at the airport and I knew them when I did. But I couldn’t have told you a thing about them until then! It was the weirdest experience, and I think not being able to visualize was the root cause.

Probably because most people don’t lie, it’s useful to have records of legit businesses, and (hopefully, but IANAL) it’s one more thing that someone could be charged on for fraud.

It also probably has a panopticon effect. If people didn’t need to register, then there’s low monitoring of what people do and so those with more grey ethics are more likely to cheat the system. But because there’s a process, one assumes someone is watching, and therefore most people will stay in line; only the most scummy people will actually lie.

I remember their name as a fact associated with the person.

That’s how the way something looks is stored in my head.

Derp, I was exhausted last night and said the wrong shape. But yeah, I just recognize things without needing to visualize it when it isn’t around.

I’ve definitely heard other aphants talk about not enjoying books. I love reading, but I typically don’t care for authors who are overly descriptive about visual things OR I just zone out during those descriptions. Most authors I read stuck to 1-2 sentence descriptions of things and then move on to what’s actually happening. That’s fine, and I might keep 1-2 of those details in mind.

I recently drew what I imagined the layout for a building in my favorite book series to be, then went back and found the text describing it to compare. I was way closer than I expected to matching the description, except I didn’t remember the entryway was a “long hallway” because literally none of the story happens there. If the description matters to the plot, I’m more likely to retain it. If something is only described at the beginning and in a lot of detail, I probably will not retain any of it.

I cannot hear in my head either, but my partner is an aphant who can do that, so they are unconnected. That one is weird too because I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I ‘know’ what they sound like, and my brain keeps the beat with the song, but I’m not hearing it. If anything it’s more like I’m silently singing along to the song. I do tend to get snippets of songs in my head because I can’t always remember where it goes though (I write as one line from a song circles endlessly through my mind).

Can you taste or smell things that aren’t around? If not, do you still know what those things are when you do taste or smell them?