Dyslexia, Pen Pals, and Letter Writing
This article was written by a long time pen friend to many. I applaud her efforts to bring happiness in letter writing to other dyslexics. Anna is really a fantastic writer and has written numerous articles for Inky Trail News. We'd like you to be courageous and take up the pen like Anna has. She says: "I took the plunge and wrote about my dyslexia. This was a difficult essay for me to write. I am fine with being a dyslexic but, oh, there are days when everything is really backwards and I still cry in frustration. It effects a lot more of your life than most realize."
by Anna Brooker, England
The ability to write a letter is something a good number of people take for granted. Consider the challenge it presents for someone with a learning disability. It's a simple thing but can cause such anguish for a person who has to struggle to be like everyone else.
There are many opinions out there today about dyslexia, some quite compassionate, while others deny its existence. The latter adds to the anxiety a child or adult can feel when they are having a particularly bad day concentrating. For the most part people seem to assign dyslexia to children, though it effects many adults. As you grow with it you learn to try to disguise it, but the shame still lingers when you miss an opportunity to cover up a mistake.
I was repeatedly told throughout my school career that I wasn’t trying hard enough, not putting my all into my assignments, and that I was capable of better work. I didn't get diagnosed as being dyslexic until well after graduation. Not much was really known about dyslexia when I was growing up so it was an incredible relief to have the doctor tell me I was dyslexic; not because I was looking for an excuse, but because it meant that I wasn’t as stupid as I had come to believe I must be from all the comments my teachers made to me and also to my parents. The first thing I did at hearing the news was to cry, a good long heartrending session for all the times I tried to explain that I was doing my best and no one believed me.
I knew at a young age something was wrong. Words like ?was? and ?saw? became the same word to me. I’d angrily erase holes in my papers trying to obliterate the letters I had written backwards and upside down. There isn’t really a way to console yourself when you know something is wrong and you can’t make it right. Sometimes you don’t even realize you’ve made a mistake, making proofreading crucial to anonymity. You just keep trying and hoping against hope it will fade away.
What I did was to write more letters. It was hard but I stuck with it. The more I wrote, the less I cried in frustration when I wrote something wrong. It didn’t go away, but I found that I had better concentration when I was doing something I really liked, and I loved having pen pals. For someone with dyslexia, not only spelling and running words together, but even writing in cursive can be a challenge, so for me writing was a labor of love. My letters helped me to cope with my problem and with practice I got better. In time I began writing more deliberately. I found I could write with less mistakes and this carried over into other aspects of my life.
Writing letters has literally been a lifeline for me, a way by which I can fit in. It has given me a measure of confidence and with that confidence, I can stand up and say, "yes, I am dyslexic, and I’m fine with that." I don’t dread anyone discovering my deep dark secret anymore, but welcome comments about it so people know that I’m not stupid; I just learn in a unique way.
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