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funny thoughts anime...
What it's like to live with a disorder that means sometimes I can't even recognize my own family members—and why I'm not keeping it a secret any longer.
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(Picture above: The author in an art studio when she was in college at Westfield State University.)
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When there was a familiar knock on our front door around eight at night on a Friday, I knew it was my dad. But then my mom, in her oversized cat sweater and baggy jeans, removed the door chain from its lock and opened the door, revealing a tall, slender bald man with no facial hair.
"Who's that?" I asked, in my blunt six-year-old way.
"It's Daddy?" My mom's voice sounded uncertain for a minute, but then she laughed. "He shaved his head!"
I had never seen my dad without his full, wavy dark brown locks before. They were unlike my mom's pin-straight light brown long bob with face framing bangs. I looked him over. My dad was still wearing a long-sleeved red plaid shirt, blue jeans with a belt, and heavy black boots. He had a pair of sunglasses sticking out of his pocket.
"Pumpkin, I shaved my hair." That was my dad's voice and he always called me pumpkin, so I started laughing, equal parts nervous and relieved. "Are you excited to spend the weekend together?" It took me a few moments to warm up to the idea that this was my dad, but then I launched into a list of things I wanted to do with him for the next two days, and watching both my parents smile at me reassured me that everything would be okay. My parents didn't notice that my panic was unusual at the time, because it's common for young kids to learn about permanence when someone drastically changes their hair. But although the panic subsided in the moment, I knew the feeling was probably related to how unsettled I felt when I was looking for my mom at the grocery store or when a neighborhood kid waved at me from the playground.
When I was around seven or eight, we learned that I have mild prosopagnosia, also known as "face blindness." Prosopagnosia because it doesn't cause any other issues with memory and isn't always caused by brain damage — as in my case, it can be developmental and genetic. I've had difficulty recognizing almost everyone in my life from time to time, whether it's someone famous, like Harrison Ford or Taylor Swift, or someone I know intimately, like my best friend or my own dad.
My face blindness comes with a set of challenges, including the surge of panic I feel when I have to search for someone I know in a large crowd. There's a deep social stigma attached to not recognizing someone that you're supposed to know, so I'm often too afraid to admit that I struggle with this, which leaves me vulnerable every time I'm not positive whether or not I recognize someone.
Brad Duchaine, an associate professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College who is on staff at the , says that face blindness can cause social difficulty, particularly because people are often offended when you don't recognize them. He adds, "It also causes workplace difficulties. If you fail to recognize your boss in the elevator, it's not going to be good for your career." When I worked in a mid-sized office with about 150 coworkers, daily interactions like mornings, meetings, and passing people when I stood up from my desk in our open office were hell. When I was preparing my ahi tuna salad at lunchtime in the kitchen, trying not to stare at the redhead man next to me, a flash of panic washed over me when he looked my way. Did I know him? He wasn't in the small social media and publicity department with me; I'd already memorized the clothing, hair, body language, posture, and voices of everyone on our team. When in doubt, I never explicitly introduce myself or say, "Hey, it's nice to meet you." Instead, I opened with, "That looks delicious," when he removed his croissant from the microwave, searching for signs that he recognized me on his face. Other people's eyes lit up and their expressions became more trusting when they recognized me, even more so when we were intimately familiar, and I look for those cues during interactions where I can't recognize someone.
