I see things that aren’t normal. I don’t see dead people or anything like that. No, it’s more like I can see people’s emotions or something. I guess you could say it’s their auras or energies, if you want to get all psychic about it, but it’s not quite that, I don’t think. Sometimes I can see colors or even patterns that seem to float around a person. I like to think of it as a person’s true image, or TI for short.
It all started when I was a little kid and I would say things like, “Mommy, look at the green man!” or “Why is that woman all polka dotty?” And my mom would correct me, pointing out that the man’s shirt was white or that the woman was wearing stripes, not realizing that I wasn’t talking about their clothes. When I started drawing what I saw, my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Y, told my parents that I had a “very active imagination.” It didn’t take me long to figure out that other people didn’t see what I saw, so I kind of stopped talking about it. Of course I still try to draw any TIs that I think are really cool in my beat-up sketchbook that I keep with me at all times. My dream is to create my own manga series, maybe with a protagonist who can see TIs, like me!
Actually, the vast majority of people look kind of out of focus to me, like when I’m not wearing my glasses in the morning and everything is sort of fuzzy and I stub my toes a lot. Except there are a bunch of people who still seem blurry to me, even with my glasses on, and I know I don’t need new glasses because I just went to the eye doctor a couple months ago. I can see objects and stuff just fine. It’s only people that sometimes look funny to me. Most adults I see seem out of focus and just dull somehow. Of course there’s Mrs. B, my art teacher and yearbook adviser, whose TI is usually as vibrant as her frizzy mass of orange curls and bright, flowing dresses.
So for the most part, people are either blurry, just normal-looking (or what I assume is normal, because I don’t really know what other people see), or they give off different colors and/or patterns. My theory is that people’s TIs are most visible to me when they’re feeling some extreme emotion, but I can’t really be sure because it’s not like it’s a documented science or anything and I’ve never met anyone like me before.
Anyhow, I’d pretty much accepted that this was just something I had to deal with, and as long as I kept it to myself and pretended to be normal, I’d be just fine.
And then, I saw him.
