Being a Synesthete

[talon]

Is why my hearing loss isn't as obvious as it might otherwise be.

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/08/6012301-your-name-tastes-like-purple

Teri has it right when saying each synesthete experiences things differently.

I experience sound as color and sometimes texture, so even if my ears don't hear the sound, the vibration of it affects the colors in which I am surrounded. My eyes hear where my ears sometimes don't.

Of course, the downside on this is that if I'm not looking in the right direction, I won't see the sounds at all and so not hear - this makes Itzl essential to listen in directions I'm not looking. If there's a lot of noise, the colors blend so I don't "hear" the right colors, also making Itzl essential to distinguish the sounds I must hear from the ones I don't need.

I used to think I had exceptional hearing, because I could follow threads of sounds where no one else could hear them. It turns out I wasn't actually hearing the sounds so much as I was seeing them.

The same holds for temperatures - I experience temperature as texture, sometimes it's a visual texture, and sometimes it's tactile texture. Cooking temps, for example, come to me as "points" - the air above the food is spiked and the more points there are, the hotter the food is. There's not really any color, and there's no actual spikes, I just know those spikes are there because my eyes tell me they should be there.

That's the way I experience synesthesia - as perceptions that must be there because this sense or that one tells me it must be there. My cross-over senses embed me in the world, providing me with contacts and connections those lacking synesthesia will never truly experience. I can operate in the single senses world quite well, but I live wrapped in a sensory experience provides me with so much detail about my world that it always amazes me.