Unfiltered

Dyslixia and disgraphia. I have five disorders, three of which are mental, but for the next few pages I’m going to just talk about those two. I’ve been dignosed with Progressive Dyslixia, so I write every thing backwards but can read and retain faster than the agrave person and love to dig in to a good Charles Dickens or Tolkin noval. I also have Disgraphia, and not with math, but I spell things they way they sound, feneticly if you will. In the gratest of all ironys, around the same time I was tested and dignosed I started my life’s ambition to become an author.

That’s right, a published, hopefully best selling, Young Adult author.

What may be the problem you ask? If I want it I should go for it, and let nothing stand in my way! Well to be frank, the English langwige sucks. Its words are spelled sometimes the exact opposite of what they sound like. Many times it will look right to me, sound right when I sound it out, but as soon as a teacher or class mate sees it they’ll look at me and ask, “Now, what where you trying to say?”

Every one else sees the way words come out of me as wrong. I don’t conform to ither their or their twisted langwige’s bizzar and aquward rules. What no one else seems to understand is this is how I think. This is how words look and fell right to me and in my head. Sure I my adjust my spelling for the convinance of others, but that dosn’t change me or how I think. That doesn't stop other from trying to change me, my mind and insist I can do everything thier way.

In the thierd or fouth grade, in order to save me from impending school structured doom and my teachers a deal on advil from reading my ‘creative interptratations’ of words I was put as a floter in Spechal Education classes. This worked out pretty good for the most part. I could step out of class and drop in if something didn't quite make sence to me and get some extra time and attenchen that normaly couldn’t be spared in a room of around twenty little devals. That was as long as I didn’t get stuck with Miss. Browning. Many times if I would ask Miss. Browning how to spell a word she would give me a dictionary and tell me to look it up. Even if I came back thirty miunets later and said I couldn’t find it, she would shake her head and tell me it was in there somewhere and to stop being so lazy and go find it. Eventualy I just started peeking in the door and if she was the only teacher avalbul I would walk around the school and back to class and just stay confused rather than be confused and embaressed.

In high school, in class peer reviewed assigments were things to be dreaded, simply because people are shallow. Many times I would write at the bottem of the paper or something simaler telling them why there was so many incorrect spellings. It never really mattered. Out of a nine point grading scale I would always get a two or three, however for the typed up rewrite I would change very few things in the way of word order and sentence flow and simply spell cheak it. My grade would then go up to eghits and nines.

In anomous critic here at Hollins I was asked if English was my first langwige, or if I was one of the transfer students in a note from workshop when my betta reader was too busy to look over my submission. In a room where people were reading anonmis works, where they author may or may not be in the room, and giving verbal feed back for a note taker a Hollins woman asked why bother with seending any edit notes becuse of the intelagance leval of the author. She had nothing to go on other than what was in front of her, and very clearly expressed that she douted the “smartness” of the person because they hadn’t grasped speling and gramer, and well what intelagent person doesn't get that?

It happens everywhere.

It is a both frustrating and interesting way to go through life. I now know more ways to use a thusoraus as a spell cheaker than I do a dictionary. The actwal spell cheak on my computer and I are old rivals at what letters should go where in what words. Around close friends a drimatic reading of any unspelled cheaked work leads to a good laugh. Crying over the fate of lost tomatos and lost tomarows are two very different things, especially when the victims head is up next on the chopping block.

I’ve learned over the years to have editors lined up and that I need to start papers days in advance of the due date, at least more so than usawal. The world still insists that I can master their english and be just as good at the rest of them if I really really try. They still don’t get it. This is how I see the world, this is how I see words and how they look right to me. Their clunky spelling with forced letters to sit in spots they don't look welcomed in on the page reads and feels wrong. This is my mind and it refuses to change for any langwaige, no matter how strange.