Let's Talk About Feelings - Tumblr Posts

Over time I've slowly discovered an odd phenomenon about myself and my ability to understand things: words are stored in my head as feelings.

The first time I figured this out, it was with the word "freezing." When I hear that word, I actually feel a little colder. It's a very subtle feeling, almost unnoticeable, and it lasts a shorter time than it takes for me to even say the word.

It's a subconscious thing. In fact, 99% of the time I don't even notice. Occasionally I'll just notice it for no reason at all. Other times I watch myself to see if it's really happening, or if I'm just making it up.

Naturally, I've tried other things. It turns out I do this with numbers as well. I have a very distinct feeling of the presence of "one," or "three," and even an idea of "one taken from three." It starts to distort with larger numbers; I can rationalize that 10,002 - 10,001 is the same as 2 - 1, but they don't feel the same. Another thing that works is punctuation; I can feel the breaks and pauses in the sentence differently based on a single comma or capitalized letter.

This plays into how I understand the world. When my teacher explains something in class, I'm able to connect with the idea in a way that lets me explain it to others in a way they can understand. When someone is telling a story of what happened to them, it's essentially happening to me at the same time; I'm able to empathize. It is the strangest and most wonderful thing.

Why do I say all this? Because maybe this is normal for people, and someone can get some use out of knowing this about themselves. Or, maybe I'm just lucky. One thing's for sure: this is all just further proof that I think too much.