Make Believe: One Anosmic’s Story
As I had hoped, Sharon has agreed to share her experience as an anosmic!
This is what she looks like:
Sharon Coyle
“Hi. My name is Sharon, and I am anosmic. I do not have a sense of smell at all. I never have. When I was growing up, I actually always thought I could smell. When we would have scratch-n-sniff stickers, everyone else said, “Mmm. That smalls like strawberry,” so that’s what I thought smell was I guess. It was kind of a game of make-believe.
It’ s hard to explain, but if you’ve never experienced what something feels like, how do you know you don’t have it? I thought if everyone else could smell, then so could I. If we were to go back in time, however, you would discover that not once was I the one to say, “Do you smell that?” or “Mmm, that smells good.” If other people said it, I would just agree with them, but never did I say it myself. That would’ve been the sign for my parents to look for, but no one ever noticed.
I can’t remember exactly when I realized that I couldn’t smell, but it wasn’t until sometime during high school. I can come up with a few reasons that might’ve led me to this discovery. In high school, I was in photography class a lot, and one day a got a whiff of the bottle of Stop Bath, which is made of acetic acid, the chemical that gives vinegar its taste and smell. I remember it irritated my nose and stayed in there for quite a few hours. I also experienced this same type of thing with an open bonfire. Even though these were just chemical irritants, they opened my mind to the fact that there was something more, something I was missing.
Also, I remember a girl in my photo class said she had no sense of smell. I had never heard of this before so maybe that was part of why I never considered it. Blindness and deafness are well-known, but having no sense of smell is overlooked. And I didn’t have the internet at that time. When I figured it out, I quietly told my parents and my family, but it took them a few more years to remember it.
It still happens today that my family forgets when they want me to smell something. I guess that is why even after I discovered I couldn’t smell, I still pretended that I could for most people. It was just too hard to try to keep explaining it to people, and they just brushed it off anyway or kept forgetting. And they would say things like, “That’s cool. Then you can’t smell bad things.” I am constantly on-edge when someone says, “What smells?” even though I know it shouldn’t be me, it’s something I can’t help feeling. Maybe I stepped in a pile of poo and didn’t know it or maybe my body is emitting a foul odor.
I get nervous even when I hear people sniffing, though that is probably just from congestion most of the time. My cousin recently told me that people don’t sniff in like that when they smell something. It doesn’t even make a noise. It’s a more natural thing, letting a fragrance into the nose. These are things I will never understand: the strength of smells or how long they last or how close you have to be to smell a certain smell. I cannot even try to imagine how many different smells exist and how they can be so different.
It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that I have been able to tell everyone about my condition, like people at work or new people I meet. Before, I tried to hide it, like it was my kryptonite. If they knew my weakness, they could destroy me. I’m tired of lying to people about it though. Even though it takes a lot of work to keep driving it into people’s heads, it is part of who I am. But sometimes I still feel like playing make-believe.”
Thanks for sharing your story, Sharon!
If you are an anosmic, or think you might be, you’re not alone. There are many others with experiences similar to your own.
