My Mind is an [Adventure]

[Adventure 59]

I somehow think that my thought processes are incredibly unique. I can't even describe them accurately.

I see math. I taste colors. Days of the week move in a certain three dimensional way in my thoughts. Sometimes when people speak, there's a sort of closed captioning in my mind that's not in words but in impressions of words and I can rewind to "replay" what they said if I missed it. My thoughts weave themselves into a tapestry of words, images, emotions, concepts, and auras that is not at all linear, but sometimes comes out in a linear fashion. I feel words. Words have shape and weight and volume and color and emotion and sometimes even scent or taste.  

And then there are the intrusive thoughts...the obsessive and compulsive parts of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The need to poke someone in the shoulder or check that my loved ones are breathing. The word or thought or piece of a song that won't leave my head. (My favorite is "I'm having a nervous breakdown" sung to a cheerful tune that is from somewhere, but I have no idea where.) The need to count sounds. Or just to count or to count a certain way. The "what-if" thoughts. The "what to do if this becomes and emergency situation" thoughts. The "hundred ways I could die doing this" thoughts or any worst case scenario thoughts that inundate me, unbidden. A good deal of my thought processes on bad OCD days are taken up managing compulsions.

I apparently also have minimal concept of time. I'm constantly amazed at people who can name a year that something happened, or how old they were, or what year of school they were in. There are things that I swear happened months ago that were years ago or vice versa. Many of my memories are in snapshots and thought processes and emotions and senses. The more joyful the memory, the more deeply I can re-experience it in my memory. Traumatic memories are flatter, like flipping through the pages of a book, most likely to protect my mind from reliving the horror. Good memories hold scents, sounds, tastes, even tactile aspects like the feel of my mom's quilted robe or what it felt like as the baby goat suckled from the bottle I held at The Friendly Farm. 

The more I talk with others, the more I realize that the way I think, process, or hold memories isn't typical. But at least it's always an adventure!