The first time I could speak about my learning disability without looking at my feet I knew I had come a long way, it’s true, and you do go through a period of denial. All I wanted for a long time was to wake up from the horrible dream and hear that I was normal, like everyone else around me.
After I took my year off from in between second and third year, and came back to class I experienced the fear I knew all too well again. I didn’t like the thought of going into a class where I knew no-one, and where nobody knew me either.
I was shocked when I heard out of someone’s mouth who was just getting to know me that I was perceived as being the quiet smart girl, who only spoke when I had something brilliant to say. I thought back in that moment to every word that I had ever spoken in class, I searched my brain for the brilliance others where sure I had exhibited. After a short period I told myself this person was just trying to flatter me, that this couldn’t possibly be the truth, that they just didn’t know me yet.
After a period of adjustment, just like in my past, I was back in the swing of things, laughing and candidly sharing in discussion around the table in the centre of our small class room. The hot flashes and red cheeks, that used to be an instant reaction to being called on by a prof, had cooled. I was all but fully comfortable in my element and felt part of the middle, the segment I had longed for years prior. I wanted to be part of the middle demographic of students who did well, but weren’t snobby top dogs, nor a slacker who struggled even to make it to class on-time.
Even when I work hard I struggle to take on the lime light, relying on my new favorite catch phrase “I’m merely faking it until I make it”. Praise, accolades, trophies, and awards feel borrowed, like any day they won’t be home when I arrive. I guess I had imagined my future at the tender age of 11 or 12 to be, working for my parents, on some incredible-sounding make-work project they would dreamed up for me, out of pity, or perhaps some new project to make use of the limited skill set I could attribute as mine during my adolescence.
I do try hard, I do, and I would be the first person to tell someone that, and I think I have in interviews, I guess I want people to know that even the level of work coming out of me is the result of something like five drafts that took longer than the average student to muster together.
I guess I am still trying to get a grip, that I can perform, that I can do well, that maybe I have used the hurtle of the disability that used to be crippling to rise above it. Strangely I have overcome a struggle, why I choose a communications degree is beyond me, but I’m graduating this year, so I must have done something right.
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