Thursday 23 January 2014

Dis-lex-see-a

Dis-lex-ea

Dyslex-see-a

Dyslexcia

Words, have always been trickstas on the page. Letters moving under my gaze could be saying something far diffentent to my intended meaning. There is a fog, a frog, between me and them, a haze, a shifting, these letters everyone else seems to write so confidently into words, well they could be doing anything down there under my fingers/flinders tapping them out, hoping they’ll stay/say what I want them do/to.

How do I describe it to you so you

can see how shifty,

how unstable lan-u-age really is. Made up images in people’s minds form into something they can see joining together in their minds eye. Up there. In here.

Letters for me, dift in for a second as I try to hold on to them, like smoke drifting through my fingers they are gone. Ive lost count of how many times ive ask my love ones, how do you spell…? And hoped I could hold on to the word long enough to get it down, see it forming/foaming knowing its right because they know, they just know how to make these words appear and convay what they want them to. Like that. *snap* magic.

Me, I am filled with doubt. There is no pinning words/worlds down.

The 1st and last letters often are ‘right’ but eveything in the middle of the word gets jumbled and I look for context to find the hidden meaning eveyone else seems to be able to see so easy, so clearly.

And there in lies homour and the horror this, another disability, another thing allowing me to see the world from a different angle/angel.

My brain is as delightly bent as my body and it screws with meaninng and comes up with the most absurd, absorb, things.

I used to feel fooish, feel like they were right, those specilist and teaches at my special school who were always so quick to asmume I was stupid, below agerave in-tell-e-gent-ce.

I used to try and choose the simpleist/sample words to use when I was writing so I didn’t have to let anyone see that I cant pin these these works/worlds/words down.

but that just made them asuume I didn’t have an advanced verbal vo-cab-uarry-that I couldn’t grabs/gasp lan-u-age with my tounge, when speaking has for me never been a problem, its knowing when it shut up. Maybe its my way of over-com-pen-sat-ing, maybe it reempowers me.

I talk-too much and in a rush, with big beatiful words, the bigger the better, with no hesitenty no doubt,

sure that when im speaking at least I can prove my inteligence.

I have been confrounted by my dislexcia recently and the frustration it can bring

as I have started dating a woman who is non-verbal, she cant talk, at all. She has dispraca- a dyslexia of the tounge. She can think the words but she cant make her tounge form them. so she uses her own unique form of sign lanuage to spell out words, slowly and always correctly, her mastory over spelling her tool to show others her intelegence. It is frustraging to have my mind hold us back from talking about ideas with a speed and an intencey I have up until now taken for granted.

Somehow, however, we are muddling through

after all there are always other more experimental ways to communicate..if you really put your mind to it.

Writing used to terrify me. I wasn’t dignosed with dyslexcia till I was 23. I didn’t take the dignosees well. I didn’t want something esle in my brain to be broken, something unknowable inside there, limiting me-keeping my dreams of ever getting stats and being a psycholgist out of my reach.


The report said ‘’further/farther teasting is suggested as there may be other learning disabilities’’. I was terrifyed that this confermed I was stupid, that the high grades I’d worked so hard for at uni and the top marks I managed to get at the equliennt of the hsc where somehow a fluke and I really was dumb.

It has taken until im 30 to come out as dyslexic and say ‘I don’t know how to spell’ and I attribute this accpance to my social media addiction and my group of friends/feends who find my querky spelling funny and can read beween the letters and puzzle out my intended meaning.

Words, the even the littlest of them are out of my control, cripitic and troubling. Unstabe, shifting, as though always on the run, getting away from me. Words like little beasts/breasts stalking about the page refusing to do what I want, to be tamed. Launage you are a effermeral misery/mystery to me.


A cause for celebration

This article on International day of people with disability, was written my me for ABC's Ramp Up website and appears here

Disability, anonymity, and the dark side of the Internet

This article was written, by me for the ABC's Ramp Up website and appears here