Original commenter for this chain here--my mental imagery for books is so strong that I can read books two decades later and call up close to the original visual memories that I had when I first read the books. My favorite books are the Lord of the Rings volumes, and I can remember different imagery I had from each successive generation of reading the book (from before I saw the movies and the Tolkien art to after).

Well... that definitely makes me envious. But also in a way it gives me relief, because during school times I always felt some sort of personal failure or laziness that I found some of the things so boring to read, but it makes sense if there's just a processing difference that doesn't give me that no matter how I try. But it must be wonderful then for you, because there's so many different books to read vs amount of high quality films/shows on any topic you desire.

Without discussing this and understanding how processing can truly differ like that I could go a lifetime wondering how people can read fiction etc, and how is it possible that I don't get what they are getting. I wonder if some drugs might allow me to get the same out of fiction books.

Another discouraging note from school times was that whenever I tried myself to read the mandatory literature fully myself, and formed my own conclusions I got bad grades and no one understood what I was getting at or what my conclusions were about, but when I just read summaries and conclusions on the Internet it was easy to get perfect grades. Too many of those things during school which made me feel delusional/crazy. Oh well. The rant went off-topic, but I just have I guess "vivid" memories of how school affected me emotionally in terms of self esteem and confidence. I remember just having my own thoughts, conclusions punished, while not understanding others, but still having to learn and memorize those facts even when I didn't understand how they came to be.