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i'd spend a lot of time paying attention to imperfections in my lenses. it was always wild to me how i could literally SEE how my vision was mediated materially, by just tuning in to all the squiggles and dots and floaters that i'd normally tune out
sometimes i'd get random shifts in where the "center of my self" was normally for me "I" am spatially some place behind my eyes. but sometimes when i'd close my eye "I" would move, slink of in some direction, sometimes even spin around? it also happened eyes open, just less
when it was eyes open, i think i often characterized those moments to myself as "gravity getting weird" or "falling into a black hole". I'd have a sense of a movement-like thing, but without any actual physical movement, and generally not enough disorientation to actually fall
oooo, horror stuff! so i noticed that when i'd watch scary movies and stuff, i'd get annoyingly persistant imaginational stuff. pattern matching and anticipating jump scares, accompanied by a distinctly-not-hallucination-but-decently-vivid-imagination-overlay of a scary thing
these were always interesting to me, because of the strange middle ground they occupied. like, it was easy to tell that they werent' real, and i don't think i ever had that confusion, and they also had some non-trivial psychological reality
another weird aspect was when i noticed they could... not be scary? like, there was a point where i thought "if i'm persistently imagining this, it must mean i'm scared of it happening" but i realized that i could be calm even in the face of aggressive horror imaginal overlays
now that i think of it, this might have been the beginning of learning the void piercing squint https://t.co/tFCAD0HCtO
one must develop the Void Piercing Squint (use the Clint Squint for inspiration) fear wants you to react you must squint squint until it starts to sweat squint until it stumbles over its rehearsed lies you need not act, at least not yet but you must squint https://t.co/qz74v3acuS
new thing; my memory of this one's fuzzy, but there were recurring visualizations i'd be trying to do (dunno why) where i'd have intense frustration at not being able to control the visualization ex: imagining a circle, and a dude on a horse jumping as it went around the circle
i remember trying really hard to get just a smooth consistent cadence, and it always fucking up. like, my imagination was *disobeying* me and it really freaked me out the horse would either speed up, or zoom off screen, or stop moving, or turn into something else. random fuckery
like i said, i can't remember why i'd be trying to visualize these things in the first place. i recall it being vaguely compulsive. it was never "for some task in life i'm trying to imagine something and failing", it would be like before bed, or just sitting in my room
there were more complex version of misbehaving visualizations. the horse-circle one was very simple and geometric. others had an imaginal overlay from video games i played (pokemon and banjo kazooie), where there was a character i controlled and enemies were flying at it
i had to mentally control the character to not get hit and there was a sense of urgency and it didn't feel good to get hit and i also was frustrated with lack of control oddly dream like characteristic right? but i've got distinct memories of this happening while totally awake
well, to be fair i'd have these episodes before bed AND during the day. thinking back, there was lots of stuff in this category where i feel like it could have "developed into something" if i'd been tilted about it, or told adults about it
like, i remember being middlingly annoyed at not being able to control my imagination, but mostly "eh, whatever, this bullshit again" i remember when reading a book on OCD i was like "ooooh, if the 'intrusive thoughts' had felt intrusive or aversion, this could have been me"
related, i remember having a violent imagination growing up, as in lots of flashes of graphically violent scenes, sometimes abstract, sometimes about specific people and i just... didn't dwell on them. they could happen along side other stuff without distracting me
and it just never felt like a problem "yeah, sometimes you just have a flash of bladed bommerang cutting of the head of the person you're talking to and then multiple explosions in the background, no biggie" i'm sure if i told adults i would have been fucked
the most upsetting version of uncontrollable imaginal stuff was; there's some large grey plane. probs infinite, but i could be more or less "zoomed" into a contained view. lots of steel ball bearings rolling around. could be more or less, and they could be moving diff speeds
there was some VERY IMPORTANT IMPERATIVE to not let there be too many balls, not let the chain reactions of them colliding get too intense, and not have the camera zoom out to much. i'd exert immense psychic force trying to keep these marbles contained
but sometimes they'd start colliding, things would begin speeding up, and there was a rising sense of impending doom at the explosion of tasks, of trying to still keep track of all the balls and slow them down, and oh fuck the screen is bigger theres too much to control!!!!
this one also occupied a weird middle space. sometimes my eyes would be closed, but i think this could happen with my eyes open. and i remember that being one i was very stuck in and did not like. this was also both pre-sleep and middle of day
^i'm also incredibly curious if any version of this sounds familiar like, it sorta rhymes with how some people have described panic attacks to me? except it's things in their life that are the stuff rolling around that's too much to control.
also, all the uncontrollable imagination stuff basically stopped by middle school. the over-eager prediction of horror stuff can still happen, but normally it takes and extra sauce. like being at my family home brings it back
ahh, i remember stuff where id be going to bed, having a horror img overlay, and going "right, gotta fix that now else it's 100% gonna end up in a nightmare tonight" and while conscious scary things were only an annoyance, nightmares actually felt BAD
@natural_hazard I have thoughts about this that I can't make sound good rn but yeah dreamlike waking experiences are a thing I've found again, was likely present in childhood but I suppressed it from an early age because nobody else knew wtf I was on about