Jennifer

Jazz music is a jumble of colors. Wind looks a transparent silver when it blows and my cat meows a light blue.

I see colors with sound as well as see my letters and numbers in color.

Each number and letter actually has a personality and sex I was aware of since I learned them as a child. The colors they are I can't say wy but they're always there.

When I read, whether it's listening to a book on tape or by reading Braille--*(I'm visually impaired and have been since age nine due to a retinal detachment and had synesthesia even before that), I see words with the individual words. for instance, wen I see the word "cat" I see a bright yellow C, a white A. and light grayish blue T. So my words and even when I hear them in speech, whether I myself am speaking them or not, are the same way. My punctuation is even colored.

Periods are dark brown, exclaimation points a bleached out green and my commas are white. Dashes are yelllow.

Voices even have color schemes. It nmostly depends on their voices most of the time, though.

Men with deeper voices have dark brown outlines and their voices match that color. Women who have higher voices have white voices and some have lighter blue voices tinged with white, depending on their tones. Older peple have more golden brown voices that are krinkly like paper bags.

The less pleasant times when having synesthesia is when noises are loud and that intensifies the color of that noise. The vacume cleaner is one example and I hate the minty color it gives off. I really don't like it, either, when the phone in my room rings when it's quiet because all I see is a wavery white line till each tone ends and it's very bright.

When in school and working on math, its sometimes distracting to see the colored numbers in my eyes when thinking really quickly. I make this squinty face as I try to work out the problem in my mind.

I've been able to use my synesthesia for remembering, though sometimes vaguely, which page I left off on in a book because I recall the colored number.

I love music, though. Techno is a deep red with each drum thrum and music from the eighties is particularly vivid with the hard electronic drums and all.

I also sense temperature difference. In cold rooms like in the basement, it looks blue in my mind the colder it gets and beige in a warmer or hot room.

Even the days of the week have colors and so do the months of the year. April is a more lighter pink like a blossom and Saturday is a bright lime green, like a traffic light but not as luminous.

Pain is even colored. the more severe the pain, though, the pinker it is. Other than that it's transparent.

Every sound has a color. passing cars, applauding crowd, and even the chewing of food, which can't really be described as a real color.

And that's how I see and experience my world around me as a true-born synesthete.

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