Gift Wrapped Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a gift, or so I keep hearing. It’s to be unlocked and embraced. I can’t really argue with that. Although I think addressed would be a more appropriate term. You see I’m someone who has been diagnosed as mildly dyslexic as both child and adult. And I find the whole gift thing a bit hard to swallow.

I’ve always felt embarrassed to say I’m dyslexic. Not incase people think I’m thick but because I feel like I’m making an excuse. As if I’m not dyslexic enough because I don’t really fit into the most obvious category.

I’m a voracious reader and have been since my teens. It’s exhausting and I can  I drift off, read page after page without taking in a word. If I’m reading black text on pure white the noise can be a bit overwhelming and it looks like a 3D image.

But it’s it’s everything else that’s the real nightmare.

I was about eight years old when I was first diagnosed. I was falling far behind at school, while suffering from frequent and debilitating migraines and depression. A child psychologist came to the school to see me and diagnosed me as mildly dyslexic. A term I still don’t completely understand.

The psychologist sent letters to my parents who sent them to the school head, Mr Hall, who denied receiving them. So they sent them again. He denied all knowledge once more.

Around this time my parents split up. I moved into a new house with my Mum and little brother.

I stayed at the same school where I continued to receive no support. I told my form teacher, an old battle-axe called Mrs Orm who was on the verge of retirement. “You’re not dyslexic,” she said, “you’re just stupid.”

I didn’t tell my parents about that, I wasn’t the sort of kid to go home and talk about what was going on at school, whether it was good or bad. I just shrugged my shoulders and bottled it all up. I never brought dyslexia up with another teacher again.

When I got to secondary school I could read okay but quite slowly. I struggled to keep up in English and standing up to read in class was humiliating. Although my biggest problems were writing and spelling. I’m left-handed as well so the way I had learnt to write with my wrist arched round above the page would become quite painful after a short while.

Field trips were the worst, I dreaded them. The clipboards we had to write on were impossible for me to use. If someone had shown me what a difference turning the page and writing upwards makes it would have helped a lot. That’s what I do now by the way.

My handwriting was, and often still is a source of embarrassment. My hand just doesn’t seem to do what my brain is trying to tell it to do. There’s no rhythm or fluidity, it’ll change direction mid-word, then I’ll begin to get frustrated, especially under pressure and start randomly placing capital letters in the middle of a word or writing things backwards.

It caused me to avoid any job, study or activity that involved writing for years. That doesn’t happen so much now.

I look at my notes from a recent writing trip to Morocco and they look like a scratchy, barely eligible mess. Some letters are really big where as others are tiny and they often point in different directions. Like I’ve invented some sort of bizarre shorthand only I can barely understand.

I once wrote an essay on Gandhi in school. I don’t remember what I wrote, It probably wasn’t very good. But I’ll never forget just how painful it was to get the words down. Mr Pace, the history teacher, said it was “a load of shit” when he had me alone in his office. I’m sure he had a point, expressing it constructively and with a touch of empathy might have helped.

I wrote another essay for English on Romeo & Juliette. The teacher, Miss Vivian, returned it graded E. It was only after Mum had contacted the school to ask why it scored so low despite having a private English teacher help me with it that she reluctantly re-graded it (actually read it that is).

That was the best grade I ever got for piece of written work at that school. It was pretty clear my teachers didn’t expect great things from me.

Giving up was easy. I’d pick and choose the lessons to go to and probably only attended around 50% of my last six months. My absence was rarely reported. I couldn’t concentrate in class and had little clue of what was going on half the time so I’d only get myself into trouble when I did turn up.

I sat my exams and failed every one. The grade that really stung was the D I got for expressive arts. It still bothers me that the A’s and B’s I got for my drama performances were wasted because I didn’t do the accompanying written work the curriculum required.

I started to write in my late twenties, while backpacking in Asia. I’d spend nights alone lying on a bed in some creaky hut or cheap hotel room, awkwardly scribbling in a journal.

I was overwhelmed by my experiences on the road and felt a desire to record everything. I’d write till my wrist hurt like hell, then break before writing again until sleep took over. It led me to go more out-of-the-way, pick the trickier routes and venture off the beaten track on my own. I had some wild, wonderful and scary adventures. I also gained some self-esteem and learned to believe in myself. I’d write long emails home and always get the same responses, thanking me for the vivid descriptions and encouraging me to write more.

The more I wrote the more I got out of it. Using a computer I could get more done and not be in pain. I could use a spell check to sort out my mistakes. It’s hard not notice your errors when there’s squiggly red lines all over your work.

I learned more on my own at a computer than I did in years of being shouted at by teachers.

I took some writing classes and started a blog. I only did it for writing practice and motivation. 500 word short travel stories.

The 3rd story I wrote won a competition in the Daily Telegraph. When I got the phone call telling me I’d won and asking where I wanted my prize money sent to I thought I was being duped by an elaborate identity theft scam. The idea of my writing being good enough to publish, let alone be worth some cash seemed more far-fetched to me than that of someone hacking my emails, then ringing me up to try to steal my information.

Then I wrote one that won a national blogging competition for a major holiday company. I got sent to Thailand, Morocco and the Caribbean to write for their blog. 5 star VIP treatment, all expenses paid.

These days I’m getting work commissioned, and I’m published regularly. It’s completely mental. Now all I want to be is a writer. The irony is quite staggering.

And then there’s dyslexia. I once wrote a piece for a writing workshop about my time at school. One or two of the older students seemed to take offence to it. “How dare you come here and suggest you’ve got learning difficulties,” was the attitude. “You’ll have to do better than that, you have to explain exactly what’s wrong with you and what makes you different.”

I can’t even answer that question. If I could invite them into my head for a day or two I’d be happy to let them see for themselves. I was shocked and frustrated. Why should I have to justify myself to someone else’s ignorance? It was just the same old attitudes I had dealt with at school.

I cringe every time I see a spelling mistake or grammatical error in my work. Maybe I beat myself up too much over it. It’s usually just a misplaced apostrophe, the sort of thing that slips under the spell check radar. Then I see people posting smug memes on social media, grammar nazi bullshit like – “Grammar, the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.” Really? That sort of thing may help someone who went to university and writes crisp packet copy for a living feel good about themselves, but for a dyslexic person with something to say, then they’re just going to feel like shit.

So fuck off.

About 18 months ago I stumbled upon a few articles about dyslexic writers. Before long I’d discovered a whole world of them. I even met with a PhD student who was writing a thesis on dyslexic writing as a movement.

The realisation of not being alone was extremely emotional. It suddenly felt like I didn’t have to  feel angry and embarrassed anymore.

I learned that people with dyslexia have visual minds. We think in pictures not words. It made me think of the way I’d tricked my brain into remembering certain things I was struggling with in school. Like the Which? magazine logo on a classmate’s pen. Once I’d logged that image I never misspelt that word again. I still see the bright bubbly font of the logo in my mind’s eye every time it crops up. The big D of the Debenhams department store sign in town was how I remembered which way round that letter went.

When I start writing I find I’m describing images in my mind. As if putting them down on the page is like scattering Polaroids across a table. I then play around with them, arranging them in a way that looks right. It’s incredibly therapeutic. Like I’m de-fragging my brain. I used to get depressed a lot and often suffer with insomnia. Since I started writing, that stuff comes much less frequently.

Writing CV’s and job applications boggles my mind still. I can work at a CV for hours and achieve nothing but headaches and nausea. I’m lucky to have a friend who enjoys them. She writes me templates and all I have to do is fill in the gaps with the mashup of art college qualifications I scraped together in the many years after school, and my weird job history.

For years I’ve been working the seasons. Jobs I’ve found through word of mouth. Hard graft and no social life. Months on the road to pay for months on the road. I spent eight years of my life without being in the same place for more than three months.

But that can’t go on forever. Yet when I re-engage with society, live in a city and try to find a job, I find myself struggling again.

In London, this career minded city, when I’m scouring the job pages or pestering agencies, I’ve a tendency to start feeling lost again, adrift in a vortex. Like I’m a tiny piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle.

But I’m in the wrong box and I don’t quite fit.

Writing isn’t enough to live on, the fact I get paid for any of it feels like a minor miracle. So I temp. It saves the horror of job applications and no assignment carries the weight of forever.

I’ve been in six different jobs since the turn of the year. I seem to have become a receptionist. I don’t quite know how that happened. Must be my welcoming smile and pleasant phone manner. When they sit me front of house I get visitors coming in and saying, “Hello, I’m So-and-So here to see Such-and-Such.” If I don’t write So-and-So’s name immediately then I’ll forget it. Instantly. But by the time I’ve written it down I’ve forgotten who Such-and-Such was. God forbid So-and-So spells his name out to me because by the time I’ve written the 2nd letter he’s already onto the 5th and I’m screwed.

It’s like they go in my ear then fall through some trapdoor in my head. Like when we did dictation at school and I was lost within seconds. Or the times-table cassettes we listened to in middle school maths.

I’d put it down to being stupid, but I know that I’m not. I’m just wired differently.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like if I’d not been like this. Or if I’d have got the help from school that I needed. Or if I’d tried a bit harder and not given up so easily.

Would I be more successful and have more money? More job prospects? Maybe. But then I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had instead. All those adventures I write about. And the people I’ve loved and been inspired by along the way.

In one way or another it all stemmed from that shaky start. And I guess if I didn’t have dyslexia then I wouldn’t be me.

And I like being me.

As for the gift of dyslexia, well I don’t buy it.

Everyone I know is gifted in one way or another.

Some of us are just a bit harder to unwrap.