Folks with aphantasia can imagine just fine, they just can’t visualize - those aren’t the same thing.

For the longest time, I thought my power was “replication”. If I stared strongly enough at something, I could create a copy of it. But the copies were far from perfect, mild variations from the original were obvious. So I tried to understand a bit more what I could do. A pivotal moment was when I was reading a book, I might have been 10 or so, with a vivid description of the character’s dog. I had always wanted a dog. Unexpectedly, a plushie appeared out of thin air.

Now, after years of training, I have finally created something from scratch. Not a copy of real life, not a creation from someone else’s descriptions. I am both elated and utterly disappointed looking at what should have been a rose, has the 5 petals I thought of, even the thorny stem. A drawing of a flower.