Synaesthesia Stuff

The problem with maths

Now, I love maths. Really. It's logical, and challenging and has algebra in it (seriously, I do like algebra). But there is one problem - numbers.

Most people who have seen me in school assume I have very few problems with maths, because I got good grades and appeared to be able to solve problems with ease. This was because I am a master of suppression.

When I do maths, I am bombarded with not only the maths problem before me, but also a range of colours, and personalities.

Let me explain.

As I briefly mentioned at the start (don't worry if you haven't bothered to read that, I won't hold it against you), I have grapheme-colour synaesthesia, so I see letters and numbers coloured in, each with their own unique colour. This is not how it works for everyone, but I am a projector, so, yay. Projecting means I see letters and numbers as colours in the real world, rather than perceiving them in my head. This can make reading a little bit distracting. (Although I imagine any form is still distracting.)

I also have ordinal-linguistic personification, and the things I mainly personify are numbers. My numbers (they feel very personal to me, so I tend to use 'my', sorry if that's weird) all have their own personalities, and genders. (Although I only recently realised a couple are non-binary or gender-fluid, which says a lot about my messed up primary school education. And really explains why I knew they were like people, but not boys or girls.)

Anyway, this tends to make doing maths a nightmare, as, for me, it's like trying to interact with a group of people who often don't want to co-operate. Never mind my poor social skills. In primary school, I would spend maths lessons arguing with the numbers in my head, because their conflicting personalities told me my answers couldn't be right. (Example: if nine was in an addition, it should appear in the answer, as nine is a big-head, and very dominating. Unfortunately, maths doesn't actually work like that.) Even to this day, I have to check calculations multiple times because I don't trust my own answers.

If I had told any teachers about this, I think it's fair to say they would have been concerned. Or, as my friend put it, locked my up in an asylum. (I'm fairly sure this is an exaggeration. What they were trying to point out was that our primary school was not an inclusive place.)

But, by the time I realised that not everyone had these problems, I had also realised that this was one of the things that made me 'not normal'. (There were a lot of them.) So nine-year-old me panicked, thought I was going mad, and tried to suppress it. This did not work, but did mean that I didn't realise what was actually going on until two years later.

This is part of the reason I hate people saying 'that's so cool'. Because at times like this, it's not. It's really not.

So, if you have synaesthesia and experience any problems like this, you have my full sympathy. And if you don't, if anyone ever tells you they have synaesthesia, take a moment to consider how that could be a problem. Because being understood feels really nice.

Always remember to think in rainbows, people! (If anyone's reading this.)