Today I went to drop my two year old niece off at my older sisters. I was shocked that the neighbor boy preceded to tell me that he was a better reader than my 5 year old niece because she can hardly read some of the stories in their readers. I could see this ounce of shame in her eyes. I could see the little girl I was when my teacher suggested to my parents in the 2nd grade that I go get reading assistants. Back then you didn't just get labeled a dyslexic if it wasn't extreme. It wasn't like I couldn't read I just had a rather high difficulty scoring at the level on my peers on spelling test. It was that difficulty that made me cry in the 5th grade because I missed a perfect spelling test score by one letter. ONE FREAKING LETTER BROUGHT ME TO TEARS. It was a joke later used by one of my favorite teacher but what she doesn't realized is I expected myself to do better because I knew I had some hurdle to overcome.
By my sophomore year of high school however, I was reading above many of my classmates. I chose to read classics like The Great Gatsby and fantasy books such as Wicked. I soon realized that my spelling impairment helped me speed read and one summer I went through about 20 books. I still love to read and don't do it as often as I should because I am focusing on trying to get into school but as I went off to college I soon also understood why the same year I got sent to reading assistance that I was also told to go to math. Much like my jumbled up spelling at times; Numbers seemed to flip. I sometimes tell the time backwards (well did when I was little), Working retail I often tell someone there total is less or more than it really is and immediately correct myself. I suffered horrible grades in both chemistry and physics because I was to scared to admit to my professors until it was to late that I was not necessarily approaching the question wrong I was just misplacing my unknowns and known.
I am not trying to say pity me...seriously, I don't want that. I just want people to know that millions of people have some form of this. Our brains just like to play tricks on us and at a young age its often cruel to say a kid is delayed or not at a sub-par. I am rather intelligent when you meet me, lets not talk politics that is not my strong suit but much like my obsession with Bull Riding if you talk about science with me you will realize my intense love for anatomy and the functionality of the human body. I don't hate God or my parents for never recognizing or getting me treated for in fact the teachers who assisted me at a young age did that. They reminded me that I was highly capable like the rest of my class. I didn't go off to be Valedictorian but I did rank in the top 11 percent of my class. I didn't become any kind of cum latte in college because of one freak semester that changed the course of my life.
I want people to know its okay to be bad spellers, just use spell check and dictionaries often. I want kids to know that its not funny to pick on someone for any reason. For the individual must overcome their monster enough in life, they don't need to define it or take it from anyone else.
I am a writer and I have dyslexia. I love chemistry but I mix up numbers....I am not gonna let labels or small imperfections in my brain stop me from engrossing myself into both the writing and science communities. It's like everything else in my life...I just gotta try harder.
Blessings and Well Wishes
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