Dyslexia

What Is Dyslexia?

It’s when a person with otherwise normal (or superior) intelligence performs poorly at tasks involving the use of words – be it writing or reading.

It also coincides with creativity, lateral thinking, and good problem-solving skills.

My Experiences with Dyslexia

I could not read or write until I was ten years old. I remember what it was like looking at a body of text and having no idea what it said!

I was diagnosed as Dyslexic by some kind of specialist in Sheffield. Did lots of tests to assess me. Puzzles, sums, reading comprehension, that sort of thing. I under-performed on reading and writing tasks but had no such problems in the general intelligence tests.

I had to have private lessons; without those lessons I would never have become literate. The state education system failed me big time, were it not for those private lessons I’d have slipped through the net. Thankfully my mother could afford private lessons!

All they did was put me into a “special needs” class at school. That didn’t help one bit and the teachers were nasty, petty, sadistic, and drunk on power and evidently thought we were worthless shits. They loved the power they had over us.

Me and my mother went to a support group for Dyslexic children and their parents. It met every Tuesday and was run by an educational psychiatrist. It was called “The Tuesday Group” and I can’t remember what we actually did there, I must have been maybe nine or ten when I went there? I can’t remember but going to The Tuesday Group is something I remember.

I remember picking up the idea that Dyslexia had something to do with one of the sides of the brain.

Re-Discovering “Dyslexia”

Fast forward to 2004. At this point I was twenty-one years old. I was studying Sociology at Warwick University and was living in a dark, creepy, and depressing former old people’s home 10 minutes’ walk away from the Coventry railway station. I was unhappy there.

I eventually withdrew and shut myself up in my study bedroom where I smoked lots of weed, listened to music and tried to work out the mysteries of the universe by brainstorming my thoughts in a flow of consciousness – perhaps even automatic writing?

I went down some interesting rabbit holes, that’s for sure. At some point I decided that I wanted to become more socially accomplished and influential. I was painfully aware that I had fewer friends than my friends and felt shy, avoidant, and not socially skilled. I wanted to be able to make friends more easily and be able to better influence people, perhaps even becoming a politician! – I therefore set out to discover how the human mind works, so I could better win friends and influence people!

Long story short: I started under the assumption that all minds work alike but later departed from this and created a complex typography of intelligences. I identified two distinct faculties: Intuition and Reason.

Reason was the acquisition of new knowledge from observation and experience, from taking in new data and processing it accordingly.

Intuition was the production of new knowledge from the faculties of intelligence – using imagination and logic.

I believed that Reason lived in the right of the brain and that Intuition lived in the left.

I believed that some people were governed wholly by Reason and some wholly by Intuition, and I’m not sure why I came to think this. I called those governed by Reason “R-Types” and those governed by Intuition to be “I-Types”. I also believed in intermediate conditions: The RI-Type and the IR-Type. I believed that you could tell what type a person was by looking into their eyes – which looking back, wasn’t very scientific!

I came to equate Intuition being associated with one hemisphere of the brain with the old idea that Dyslexia had something to do with one of the hemisphere of the brain and made the leap of declaring that “Dyslexic” was the word for I-Types. I therefore considered myself an I-Type and started calling myself “Dyslexic”. This was encouraged by an enigmatic girl I lived with who was Dyslexic.

There was one person I lived with who I decided was very much an R-Type. I once performed a kind of test on him, and much to my surprise it worked.

We would play chess. Whoever plays as white goes first in chess. When we played, I would put one piece of each colour in each of my hands. I would then randomly jumble them between hands behind my back and then offer the R-Type one of my hands for him to choose – he would play the colour of the piece in whatever hand he selected. I could command his choice.

If I wanted him to select my left hand (his right) I would present him with my hands and say “OK, you choose. Right then…” and he would pick the one on his right. To make him pick the one on his left I would say “OK, you choose one and I’ll take what’s left…” and it worked – every single time. I could not believe that an educated person on a good course at a decent university would repeatedly fall for such a trick. But he did.

I eventually ended up on a Psychiatric ward and by the time I was discharged I had abandoned my I-types vs. R-types typology and the idea of being Dyslexic. When I was being admitted to the ward the doctors thought I believed that I had “special powers” which I did not believe – I believed that I-Types were relatively common and not at all special. The fact that they did not understand this was frustrating and really pissed me off. Anyway, I made a lot of noise about Dyslexics when I was on that ward.

The idea was that Dyslexics pick up on the meaning and power of words, whereas R-types look at words in terms of their structure, pronunciation and spelling.

When I was on that ward, I believed that people had been sent there, for my benefit and that the whole place was a big show put on by the Intelligence services and orchestrated by some higher power to help me learn and develop according to how they wanted me to. It felt as though people had been sent in there for my benefit and that I was there to learn and develop. But basically, I thought the whole ward was a great big set up, co-ordinated for my own personal benefit. Which is of course classic Psychosis.

The Ward In 2016

When I was thirty-three years old, I ended up back on a Psychiatric ward. This was back in 2016 and by then I had had Madaba for twelve years.

There was a young man there. He came on the ward a few days after me. I will refer to him as John, but that wasn’t his real name. When I first met him, he was a drooling mess, he was barely with it. He was catatonic. But he soon improved and became very bright and astute. He claimed that I had Jedi mind control powers! It was fun being on the ward with him, those were good times! We joked about being Jedi warriors who were sectioned on a Psychiatric ward, which was hilarious. But he did think that I had Jedi powers! – “Those are not the droids you’re looking for”. And for a while I too believed that I had powers akin to those of a Jedi master! – I thought he was brilliant and met his parents, who were nice. He was a very bright young man. But quietly brilliant.

When I was doing something or other in one of the activity rooms a peculiar young man turned up, he was not one of the ward staff and neither was he a patient. He asked me “what side of the force are you on? Are you a Jedi?” and I thought that it would be ludicrous to identify as a Jedi, so I said no. He then said, “So you’re a Sith?” and I indignantly said “no! of course not” and he then said “ah, so you’re a concerned citizen of The Republic?” – and I said yes, that’s what I am. Not allied to any one side of the force but aligned with the values of The Republic.

At another time I was in the activity room with some of the other patients, and the same man joked “whilst we’re all here why don’t we plot to steal the Rothschilds’ gold?” which I think was a bizarre thing for someone to say.

To me having Jedi powers was a funny and absurd joke – but I then equated it with being Dyslexic – and decided that I had healed John using my Dyslexic powers. I started identifying as Dyslexic again. I thought that John was also Dyslexic. And if I was then I am certain he was too. Dyslexia then became something I was interested in again. I basically thought I was blessed with super-powers but was not entirely sure what those were, other than that they had something to do with communication and empathy. Although I later came to believe in something akin to “telepathy” although I wouldn’t call that and that word doesn’t really cover what I mean. But “Dyslexic” does!

There were two other people who turned up on that ward who did not belong there. They were ostensibly patients but I’m pretty sure they weren’t, and they didn’t work there either. I got it into my head that they were both Dyslexics and they had been sent in there to meet me, as a part of some kind of training or assessment by the intelligence services (I’m thinking MI5???) – they were both in their early twenties but old enough to be university graduates (although the intelligence services do employ non-graduates) and I suspected that they may have answered some kind of advertisement that they’d come across.

Anyway, I decided they were trainee intelligence staff or were being assessed and recruited. I thought that my ideas about Dyslexics that I’d came up with in 2004 had filtered upwards into the intelligence services and were eventually validated by experts. And they would have been aware of me, for instance a senior university person told me “you are a part of a very tiny elite”. And I made a huge noise about being an MI5 asset when I was claiming they wanted me to found a grass-roots revolutionary social movement. There are other reasons too, but I’ll not go into them here. I came to believe that because of me the intelligence services started looking especially for “Dyslexic” people.

I will call these two young men Candidate 1 and Candidate 2. I only remember the name of one of them, I have totally forgot the name of the other one. But then I am no good at names. I liked Candidate 1 but wasn’t so keen on Candidate 2. If it were up to me and there was only one job going I'd have given it to Candidate 1.

Candidate 1 was a young man who would do yoga down in the hospital gardens. He self-identified as a Neanderthal. We were in the activity room and somehow (I forget how exactly) we heard news of a terrorist attack in Turkey. He jumped into action, and we decided to make a “whodunnit” thread on the internet, speculating who was behind the terrorist attack. We spent some time deciding which board on 4chan we should make a post on. Then, I had a stroke of genius. Earlier that day I had found a world atlas lying on the floor. I picked it up and took it back to my room. After my great idea stuck me, I went back, retrieved the book, and showed Candidate 1 the section showing the Middle East. I gently pointed to where Israel was, without saying a single word, and a serious look developed on his face, and I could tell he was thinking. He then abandoned the idea of the whodunnit thread, and we forgot about all that and moved on.

Candidate 2 was also a young man, and he had tattoos on his arms and legs. We were once in the TV room on the ward. Or I was and he then came in. Earlier in the day he had come up to me and awkwardly asked (as though he was seeking me out) “what college did you go to?” – clearly asking me which college of either Oxford University or Cambridge University I’d been to. And of course, I’d been to no Oxbridge college. My degree is from The Open University and before that I’d studied at Warwick. The TV was on, and the commercial break was running. And an advert for The Open University came on! – and then a recruitment advert for the Royal Airforce came on, that basically said something about “serving your nation”! He evidently noticed this and I looked at him and said “that’s the college I went to, The Open University” whilst the RAF advert was playing! He looked shocked and bewildered by the telling synchronicity and later tried to take back what he had said, but I wasn’t having any of that.

At some later point I told him that I had a task for him: Here’s an exercise – think of a piece of music that means a lot to you and then think why it means so much to you. Half an hour later he was parading round the ward shouting out the lyrics to “Everybody’s Changing” by Keane!

At another time I thought I’d have a bit of fun at his expense, and I ended up encountering him on one of the corridors on the ward. I knew that in conspiracy theories pointing to your eyes is supposed to be “illuminati” symbolism, referring to the all-seeing eye of Divine Providence. So I deliberately and slowly winked, and pointed to the eye that wasn’t winked, and he was visibly disturbed by that, shocked even, which amused me greatly!

I liked Candidate 1, he was nice. Not so much Candidate 2. But I am pretty certain they were both Dyslexics. Or at least what I meant when I used the word “Dyslexics”.

I'm not exactly sure what was happening on that ward back then, but that is what I experienced there, that is what happened to me. Beyond that, I have no idea what happened and what I did. No one has ever told me!

Dyslexia Today

Right now I don’t know if I believe in Dyslexia in the same way as I’ve done before. I used to consider it a kind of super-power but perhaps it isn’t and it’s just some kind of “learning disability”? – although it could of course be both!

But I no longer identify as Dyslexic and don’t believe that I have Jedi powers of mind-control. I do however have a kind of belief in telepathy, but I don’t believe in the transmission and reception of brainwaves from one brain to another, through the air. I will explain my ideas about that in another article.

However, I do still consider myself Dyslexic even if I now have no literacy problems, as this text you’re reading shows!

I think I was spotted by the system when I was a child and that that may have happened to Candidate 1 and Candidate 2. And also to John of course. I believe that the education services and mental health services both work together, alongside the intelligence services who, as their name suggests, have an interest in Intelligence!

Perhaps being bad at reading and writing and being Dyslexic are different things that have often been confused? And maybe you’re Dyslexic? If so, there is no reason to feel inadequate as I once did.