Do I Have A Mental Disorder, Or Do I Just Not Care Enough?
Do other people not recognise themselves in pictures sometimes?
Oh my God, I thought, that’s Matt LeBlanc — the actor who plays Joey Tribbiani!
There he was, coming down the street. I was star-struck. I didn’t know what to do except stare ahead, fascinated, at this Hollywood star coming right at me.
Then I got closer. It was not Matt LeBlanc.
The person coming towards me was, in fact, a Black woman.
This is the kind of experience that makes me say I have ‘dysaspexia: like dyslexia, but with faces.’
There is an official disorder called prosopagnosia (face-blindness), but that seems to mostly be reserved for people who can’t even recognise their own mothers. It’s definitely not that bad with me — though it did take me a solid six months to be able to conjure up the face of my boyfriend. To this day I need to start with his jaw, because that somehow sticks, and I can piece the rest of the image together from that.
It’s things like that that make me think I have a mild cognitive disorder.
But a while ago I was watching a movie when my friend asked: ‘Who’s that actor again?’
‘Rutger Hauer,’ I immediately replied. I didn’t even know I knew that name, and I hadn’t recognised him before my friend asked.
It’s things like that that make me think maybe I’m fine.
A while ago, we were watching Red Sparrow, in which Jennifer Lawrence plays a spy recruited into the Russian secret service by her uncle. The whole movie centers around the question of who the mole in the organisation is, and Lawrence is tortured by her uncle in an attempt to make her speak. She doesn’t. Instead she whispers, in a thick Russian accent: ‘Did I not do a good job, uncle?’
I was watching the final scene in awe, eager to find out who the mole was. A man in a dirty suit exits the plane. Lawrence walks right up to him and whispers: ‘Did I not do a good job, uncle?’
I leaned over, eyes still on the screen, and asked: ‘Who is that man?’
I can look at an actor for an hour, but put a different hat on him, and he might as well be someone else. What gives it away is usually the expression on other people’s faces. A kind of fear-tinged awe.
Like the time I introduced myself to my safety diver before an underwater gig. He was a short man, incredibly muscular — he seemed wider than he was tall. He had huge, dark eyes, a strong jaw and a kind smile. His name was Georgi.
I introduced myself, turned around to say something. Then I turned back and held out my hand to someone who was standing in front of me.
‘Hi, I’m Stella. Oh. Oh God, I just did this. I’m sorry. Georgi, of course.’
It was the look on his face that gave it away — a flash of confusion, a tiny frown passing over his (highly identifiable) features.
‘Oh, I have that, too. But with names, mostly,’ people will say.
I don’t necessarily forget names — it’s more that, whenever I run in to someone, I have to sift through the rolodex in my head to see which name would match this person’s looks and the situation.
For example: someone raises their hand to me in a supermarket. I smile and say: ‘Hi!’ and then quickly start sorting: a guy, about my age, black hair, looks Chinese (?), and we’re in a supermarket in Rotterdam. That has to be either X or Y because those are the only Asian-looking men I know in Rotterdam. I’m pretty sure this was Y.
I can describe people: tall, dark hair, small nose, green eyes. I have to take mental notes of their appearance to make sure I can find them in my mental rolodex.
When I taught ballet classes to over 40 small children (most of which only showed up once every three weeks), this was a real problem. I scribbled little notes on their looks in the sidelines of my book. I felt horrible when I wrote things down like: ‘weird forehead’ or ‘kind of looks like a hamster’. I made sure to always write in a tiny, near-illegible script and never show the book to anyone else.
Is this normal? Are there other people out there who sometimes don’t recognise their own face in pictures or videos, when they’re wearing the same clothes or costume as someone else?
Is not being able to conjure up the face of your university professor who’s been teaching you every week for a year the kind of thing that could happen to anyone?
Do others have trouble imagining what their partner looks like?
Or am I just a shallow person who coasts through life, never really noticing anything, and who feels no need to retain information about other people?
Either there’s something genuinely wrong with me… or I have a slight cognitive disorder.
Fingers crossed for the disorder.
