What my stroke taught me (2017)

To me, the immediate physical aspect was that all text started to look like Star Wars languages. Another aspect was that it was difficult to even concentrate on the text. It no longer stood out from the environment. It was an irrelevant detail, a decoration you wouldn't pay particular attention to.

I can also appreciate what the author is saying about how their perspective of the world shifted. I expect that her shift was a lot larger than mine, but mine already made me appreciate that in the modern world, when we look at things, we often seek to retrieve some bit of information. We don't look at them holistically. Our tunnel vision is tremendous.

As you are reading this comment, you are so focused on the words that you don't see the boxy proportions of the rectangular screen you're looking at. You don't see the contrast on the screen; you're not even paying attention to the colors, likely. The texture of your display is expected to be different on the back, the corners, and its surface. Your display is also a rectangular light, casting a shadow of your head behind you now. Some parts of the light are stronger than others; it's not a uniform light. The device you're reading this on (whether a monitor or a phone) has hot spots and cold spots on its chassis that you may not have thought about, despite looking at it or touching it for thousands of hours.

But if you can't read, you see all these things on a computer monitor, on a TV, on a road sign, on a book, and that's all that your brain finds significant about that object. That's quite interesting - how our language abilities shape our everyday perception of reality.

I would even say that it can be an enlightening experience to take a holiday from reading. Though I don't think anyone can come close to enjoying it, considering how much anxiety the thought of whether they'll learn it again causes. In some ways, experiencing the world around them freshly anew, without that anxiety (as the author has), is a blissful and beautiful experience few people have had in their lives.

curious, did you start reading at a very early age? I started around 3. this is what I personally think it is. It’s not like I dont have the ability to hear a narrative in my head, I just dont do it. I’ve suspected that since I began reading so early, it has something to do with it - and if you’re not capable of reading /comprehending as fast as I can, like if you’re literally sounding out every word in your head you’d never be able to keep up with whatever it is I do. I’d be enormously frustrated by that process. But to me this is what “narrative voice people” must do in their heads.

or maybe it has to do (for me) being on the spectrum (high functioning)

When I write it’s almost always flow of consciousness style and I make a lot of mistakes. In online or chat kind of settings it makes me look a little dumber than I am, I mix words up on the spot a lot, it’s probably the closest thing to whatever would be my “internal” narrative, also because I am limited by the speed at which I can type. So when to type a paragraph if I am being serious it usually takes 70+ revisions (not changing what I am saying) for me to consider it perfect. I don’t usually bother and go 1/10th of that for professional writing and tend to be called a decent writer (again, I have to try).

So that’s probably the lack of narrative thing. writing my thoughts out helps. I have always kept extensive journals going back to when I was 5 or 6 or whenever I could write.

for your second scenario yea that’s a very easy thing for me. I often argue with myself anyway. I mutter out loud sometimes, probably makes me seem a little unhinged but with what I do it fits right in with other “types.”

I do visualize and play out scenarios a lot in my head, they are very vivid, and I am pretty proficient at going farther with this with lucid dreaming. Sights/sounds in my head are very easy for me. I just don’t really hear my own voice, or whatever.

I think it comes with some downsides with introspection sometimes but I’ve been well aware of this for a while - which is why I think the “argue with yourself with two conflicting arguments” thing is probably easy for me. I am constantly in “arguments” with my own assumptions. I think this last thing is why I’ve always been fairly proficient with abstract math.

She's fine now, though, so no worries.