as far back as I remember..

As far back as I remember I have been able to see time in my head. As a kid my mom said I had a crazy ability to understand time even as a toddler. I can pull up memories really far back because in my head the different years and my ages look different in my head. It is 3d abstract space. They aren't colored and I can't draw them, but they are there. It is kind of like how a juke box flips through to a particular record and then pulls it out and scrolls to the correct song. That is how my memories are, but by age.

When I think about time all of the months are in a line and I am standing in the summer time. It is hard to describe, except that if I think about December 31, it feels like I am falling off the edge of the earth. The weeks scroll inside the months vertically and the days scroll horizontally. I do not stand on a particular day, it just scrolls depending on the day. The current day is bigger than the others.

When I think about numbers they ascend vertically in horizontal rows of 10. Math always came easily because I could just jump around through the numbers in my head.

I am not sure how old I was when I told my mom about this.. maybe 11 or 12. I was pretty sure that not everyone thought this way, but I never thought anything of it. I have never needed a planner, and I am really good with time and dates. Recently, my mom told me she heard a guy talking about how he could see time in his head.. she couldn't remember what he said he had. This made me want to know what it was called. It boggles my mind why I never googled it before- I guess I had no idea that there was a name for it.

I have synesthesia. My primary type is time/space synesthesia and my secondary is number form synesthesia. Some people with synesthesia see letters and numbers as certain colors. Some attach personalities to days or numbers (I did this as a kid- I have stopped doing it, but I can remember not liking certain numbers or days of the week because of characteristics they had). The strangest form I have heard of is when people associate certain words with tastes. Crazy right?! There are almost one hundred identified types of synesthesia.

this is sort of how I see numbers- not in color but out in front of me

My years are not circular, but they are shaped and colored spaces that extend from far left (January) through far right (December) I think I stand in the summer all of the time because my birthday is in June and I think in school years rather than calendar years.

Synesthetes do all of this subconsciously. Most kids who have it don't realize that other people don't think this way until they are older. When scientists have studied it and done brain scans- multiple parts of the brain light up when certain things are talked about or stimuli shown.