Closed Eye Hallucinations

Image by Copilot/Bing

This weekend I learned that other people do not continue to see images behind their eyelids when they close their eyes.

I always have. Generally, it's an outline of whatever I was looking at before I shut my eyes, with the white or lighter color showing up and giving me sort of a negative of the object.

No eye doctor or regular doctor, or anyone else for that matter, has ever mentioned this to me. And before this weekend, I'd never mentioned it to anyone else, either. Like my tinnitus in my ears, I thought it was something everyone experienced because I've experienced for as long as I can remember. (Then I began reading about tinnitus and realized it wasn't normal.)

Saturday night I shut my eyes to a particularly vivid negative image of the dresser because my husband had had the overhead light on instead of the bedside lamps, and I asked him how it looked to him.

"When I shut my eyes, all I see is dark," he said.

"All the time?" I asked. "You don't see outlines or white streaks?"

"No."

I rolled over and asked Alexa what it was called if you saw things behind your eyelids when your eyes were closed.

She came back with "closed eye hallucinations."

Also called "CEVs," this is apparently not something everyone experiences. It is not a dream, either. Unlike dreams, CEVs occur when individuals are fully awake and conscious. These hallucinations, therefore, can range from simple geometric shapes to complex, lifelike scenarios. (Fortunately, I don't have the lifelike scenarios, although I do daydream quite a lot. But not with my eyes shut.)

Common triggers include using psychedelic drugs (which I do not use, although I am on a lot of medication for blood pressure and chronic pain) or sleep deprivation and fatigue. I don't know what the trigger for me would be, since it happens all the time. 

I suppose it could be something else. I found these possibilities:

• Image Burn-In (Afterimage): Not to be confused with CEVs, image burn-in occurs due to bright light and fades away as the retina heals. (Maybe I looked at the sun when I was a kid and my retina never healed? But wouldn't an eye doctor have noticed?)
• Entoptic Phenomena: CEVs exclude phenomena like floaters, wiper ridges, and vitreous movement, highlighting the distinction between controlled hallucinations and involuntary visual experiences. (I have floaters. What I see when I close my eyes is not a floater. It's an image.)
• Blue-Sky Sprites: CEVs are unrelated to bluefield entoptia, which involves leukocytes migrating through retinal blood vessels. (Perhaps this is a reference to that white line I see in the sky when I look up with my eyes open?)
• Physical Retinal Stimulation: CEVs are independent of visual noise caused by physical retinal stimulation, such as pressure phosphenes, which result from mechanical stimuli. (I think that refers to the weird things you see if you push on your eyeballs.)

I am not sure what this is, honestly, except that apparently not everyone has it and I'm 60 years old and just figuring that out. I place it up there with my photographic memory, which was something else I thought everyone had only to learn they didn't, and auditory hallucinations I sometimes have. (I hear people calling to me, like when I'm in the car and there is no way anyone is actually calling to me. It's weird. It doesn't happen often. Usually, I am highly stressed when it does happen.)

I have something screwy in my brain, I guess. Maybe I should leave my brain to science. As busy as it is up there, there must be something interesting going on.

At any rate, next time I see my eye doctor, I will mention it to him and see what he says, now that I know it's not normal.

Sunday Stealing

1. What was the best toy you ever owned?

A. I'll go with the set of Johnny West dolls and accessories that I had before my tweens. I lost it all in a flood at my grandmother's, but they were fun to play with.

2. When in your life have you felt the loneliest?

A. Usually in a crowd.

3. What is your strongest emotion?

A. Sadness.

4. When were you the most disappointed in yourself?

A. I was most disappointed in myself when I was unable to have children, even though that was no fault of mine. It certainly felt like a fault or a failure on my part.

5. Which law would you most like to change?

A. The Second Amendment could use a rewrite.

6. Who is the person you have hated the most in your lifetime?

A. I try really hard not to hate people. 

7. What has disappointed you the most?

A. My mother's lack of empathy and love.

8. What's the best possible attitude toward death?

A. It's going to happen to everybody sooner or later. Make the best preparations you can for your stuff. I mean, basically your body rots and other people take your stuff. That's what happens on the barest of levels. The only thing you may be able to control is what happens to your stuff.

9. What's been the longest day in your life?

A. The day my husband had his hand caught in the hay baler was a very long day.

10. What is the biggest coincidence in your life?

A. 

11. What's the oldest you'd like to live?

A. I don't know. It depends on my health. I have chronic pain and I'm not sure I want to put up with that for another 40 years to make it to 100.

12. Who is the most amazing woman you know personally?

A. I know a lot of amazing women. My friend Teresa amazes me constantly. She does all this household stuff to perfection and takes care of herself, volunteers for things. She's terrific.

13. What was your best experience in school?

A. Having Tina F. for my math teacher was by far the best experience I had in high school. She made everything better, even the math.

14. What's the most meaningful compliment you've ever received?

A. We just had this question a while back; my former editor told me I was fearless when I went after a story in my younger days. I still think about that.

15. What is the most you've spent on something really stupid?

A. I am not sure. I'll go with a guitar; I can't play but one of them at a time, I don't know why I have several. I surely do not need another.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Only Love

Saturday 9: Only Love Can Hurt Like This (2014)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this week's song, Paloma Faith sings that she thought she wouldn't care if her lover left but now she's begging him to stay. Can you think of something you were surprised you missed when it was gone or over?

A. I have been surprised at how much I miss newspaper work. It's been 10 years and I still miss it. I rather thought I would be over it by now.

2) Paloma obviously has a powerful, versatile voice. She's also a trained dancer. Tell us about two things you do well.

A. I can write well, and I play the guitar decently. I would never claim proficiency on the guitar, but I do it well enough.

3) She was a judge on two British TV shows: The Voice and The Voice Kids. Do you watch competition shows (The Voice, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc.)? If so, are you any good at picking the winners?

A. I watch The Voice and I don't think I've ever picked the person to win. 

4) This week's song was written by Diane Warren. She's one of America's most successful song writers, having written more than thirty Top 10 hits. Think of your favorite song. Do you know who wrote it?

A. Yes, Landslide, written and performed by Stevie Nicks.

5) She's made a fortune writing love songs, mostly from her Hollywood Hills office. Diane spends up to 10 hours a day in a room she describes as "cluttered," and admits it's an unlikely setting to write about romance, yet it works for her. Describe a setting you consider romantic.

A. Beaches at sunset are romantic. A cabin by a lake in the mountains is romantic. Bedrooms can be romantic, as can candle-lit dinners.

6) In 2014, when "Only Love Can Hurt Like This" was popular, Joan Rivers died. Best known as a comedienne, she was also a successful businesswoman, promoting her jewelry line on QVC. Do you ever watch shopping networks?

A. No, I do not watch those.

7) The Apple Watch was introduced in 2014. Are you wearing a watch as you answer these 9 questions?

A. Yes, but it is a Timex. I always wear a watch and have for as long as I've been able to tell time.

8) One of the best-selling books of 2014 was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It won awards for best YA (young adult) fiction. Is YA a genre you often read?

A. I read several YA books a year. I read a lot of different genres and have an eclectic reading list most years.

9) Random question: What's something on your to-do list that you just can't get around to doing?

A. Decluttering. Mostly I don't know what to do with the stuff I'd like to remove. We're too rural for a yard sale.

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I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however. 

Thursday Thirteen

1. Some weeks Thursday creeps up on me and here I am, with nothing to write. Then I have to do what I'm doing today - just fly off the cuff and hope something comes to me.

2. A book I listened to recently split a character in two and gave her two parallel lives. This was a nod to the theory of the multiverse. Listening to a book that utilizes this was a bit difficult, but not impossible. (The book was Maybe In Another Life, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, if you're interested.)

3. As I understand multiverse theory, and this may be incorrect, I am not looking it up, what happens is that with every decision you make, because there's a choice, the "you" in another multiverse makes a different choice. That splits into a new universe where that person continues on. 

4. While this seems like it may be possible, if you follow it through, that means every micro-nano-second of your life, you're splitting into pieces and creating new universes, because don't we make decisions practically every second?

5. Much of what we do is habit - but it's a still choice as to whether you wash your hair the same way, or not. So, theoretically every little second there would be a split, ad infinitum, on and on, because each one of those splits would go on to make decisions and create new universes, too, while you're still creating new universes.

6. As Sheldon said in The Big Bang Theory, in one of those universes I am probably a clown. As in the kind that dresses up in a suit with a big nose, not the snarky somewhat sarcastic person I actually am sometimes.

7. I have often wondered where my life would have gone had I made different choices along the way. What if I had not decided to go to the high school football game where I met my husband? Most likely he would have met someone else and he would be married to another woman.

8. And me? Maybe I would have gone on to become a college professor, or a lawyer, or maybe none of those things. Maybe I would have met some other man and married him. Maybe I'd be a bag woman living under a bridge. I have no way of knowing.

9. Isn't this what fiction is, sort of? We fall into a different world when we read fiction, a whole other universe, so to speak, even if the fiction is not fantasy or science fiction. It's still a fictional world with fictional characters. 

10. Or is the writer subconsciously channeling a life being led by some alternative person created by some decision made when he or she was five years old? Are we aware on some level that we're creating different worlds - or are we losing parts of ourselves in this process? Shouldn't there be a gain and a loss to even things out?

11. Fortunately for me, I am no quantum theorist, I just know about this because I read a lot and I've seen it come up in various things. They talked about it some in The Big Bang Theory, too. I wonder how many people know more science from watching that show. I know I do. I just hope it's good science.

12.  Maybe ghosts are actually other universes that somehow bisect with our own, some place where there's a thin veil and the worlds cross over. 

13. And then there's the concept of time. I doubt it would be the same in each universe, so in some universes maybe it would be pre-industrial times, and in others maybe it would simply be hunter-gather land. Some would have to be in the future, wouldn't they? Or not. I don't know.

Weird things to think about. I should read a book about it sometime when I have time.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 856th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Red Alert

Since the beginning of the year, we've been notified of security breaches with our bank, our insurance agent, a doctor's office I hadn't been to since 2015, and now ATT.

Some of these companies offered free monitoring through one source or another. We signed up for them.

Last night, my husband received a notice that his Social Security number was on the dark web (whatever that is), and along with this information was a list of other information available with his number.

The problem was the other information wasn't his information. It was someone else entirely.

After a 50-minute wait on the phone, my husband got an agent with the monitoring company, who told him that the criminals on the dark web create names and addresses to go with the Social Security number, and then sell that information for who-knows-what nefarious purposes.

And there was nothing they could do, the agent said. We could only take some precautions that were already outlined in the email that alerted him to this potential problem.

This morning, I spent several hours first reviewing our credit reports and then implementing credit freezes and fraud alerts on our information. I keep up with this stuff fairly well anyway, but this was an engrossing detailed look at everything. It was a pain in the butt, but I am happy to report that I didn't find anything amiss.

But that doesn't mean something couldn't be amiss a little further down the road.

There is no escaping this kind of thing in this country, because we have politicians who do not believe in regulating companies so that they would have to say, actually implement good hacker protection on their accounts. It is beyond comprehension to me to know that my bank was hacked, for example. The bank should have better protection. Plus, they didn't even offer any monitoring. They just sent a letter that said too bad, so sad, your tough luck. 

My insurance company and ATT should have had better protection, too. However, I guess they saved money so that 73 million of us could now worry about whether or not our credit or our good name was being stolen.

Sometimes, your name is all you have. You shouldn't have to defend it, yet here we are.

In any event, we must all be diligent. Things are falling apart, and we must take care. Watch our backs, so to speak. Maybe watch your friends' backs, too.

Here are steps you can take to protect yourself:

1. Create a mySocial Security account with the Social Security Administration to claim your SSN and prevent others from doing so.

2. Review your earnings on your Social Security Statement to ensure accuracy.

3. Obtain free credit reports from annualcreditreport.com and check for unrecognized accounts or charges.

4. Monitor your bank and credit card accounts regularly for any unauthorized transactions.

5. Set up a fraud alert by contacting one of the major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion.

6. Consider a credit freeze with the three credit bureaus, which makes it harder for someone to open new accounts in your name.

7. Additionally, it’s important to update your passwords and enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for an added layer of security. If you suspect any fraudulent activity, report it to the authorities immediately.

For more detailed guidance, you may want to consult with a professional who specializes in identity theft protection and recovery. However, I don't have any idea how to find one of those professionals and neither does anyone else, I suspect. If you know, let me in on the secret, please!