I have prosopagnosia, or face blindness. For as long as I could remember, it was always impossible to recognize and identify the faces of my friends and family. At some point, I stopped being able to see my own face as well. I can see the color of my eyes and the shape of my mouth and the bridge of my nose, but if anyone took a picture of me and showed me it, I probably wouldn't know it was me.

Having face blindness as a first-year college student is extremely inconvenient. I've read online that people with prosopagnosia in a new setting find it easier to remember new people through name association. You would figure that a person with face blindness would at least make an effort to be good with names, yet I am terrible with connecting names to people.

Making new friends always follows with a lengthy apology and explanation when I eventually forget who they are. The effort to distinguish multiple people from each other is so mentally straining that there are times where I think it's better to not talk to anyone new at all. At some point, after my first month in college, I actually did give up on trying to make new friends and decided that my old high school friends were enough.

I'm talking about this exigence that I experienced early in college because I wanted to contrast it with my current situation. I am now halfway through my first year and I've made a surprisingly large portion of new friends. This wasn't due to an extra effort given by me, but rather it was due to the extra effort given to them, the people who still tried to be friends even when it seemed hopeless. Eventually, those people gave me enough chances until I could finally remember them.