What It Feels Like

People always ask me what it feels like to have Dyslexia, but it’s hard to describe to someone else. I personally am not great at verbally expressing myself, so I have chosen to write below how Dyslexia has affected me, but I’ve also provided a number of video links where others have described how it makes them feel.

When I first started school (kindergarten through grade 3), letter sounds, decoding words and reading fluency were the measures of how well you were doing in school, and it was the beginning of when I started to feel different. I couldn’t hold my pencil very well, hear the sounds of the letters, decode simple words or read with any flow like the other kids could. I didn’t understand why. Most kids would advance quickly from reading level to reading level, getting to read colourful picture books, while I couldn’t get off level 1 and was downgraded to black and white copied paper books. To this day, it still upsets me thinking about it, especially because I’m a creative person and was attracted to colourful books, but they were taken away, and I wasn’t allowed to read them. Most kids knew that “A” says “ah”, “B” says “buh,” or that two letters together made certain sounds like “Sh” or “Th”. For me, these sounds didn’t come naturally, and this is when my frustration started, and adults noticed that I was struggling even with extra help. In the early years, intelligence was measured by my ability to read, and I didn’t measure up, and I felt different than the other kids.

Once I was diagnosed with Dyslexia, an IEP was put in place in school that really helped me to have some necessary accommodations so that I could keep up with the work.

In middle school, the demand became more about the written output to show what I knew. This is when I realized that I struggled to even put my ideas onto the page. A whole new problem began that set me apart from my peers again: I wasn’t able to write as well or as fast as those around me. 

Writing took me longer; I needed assistance, and the red markup that came back from teachers was humiliating. Through my IEP, I was allowed to use technology in the classroom, and speech-to-text became something I relied on. The problem was I didn’t like to use it in front of other people. I would wait until I got home, and then all my written work piled up. I didn’t text a lot with friends and used more short replies in a group chat as I couldn’t keep pace with the conversation as everyone was texting so fast.

As the years went on, I learned strategies and developed my IEP to support me the way I needed it to in order to complete the work assigned, but as secondary school arrived again, new challenges needed to be faced. Dating, the expectations of teachers and the talk of post-secondary education all put new pressures on me. I could no longer hide behind the group chats for dating as it was just the other person and me. Texting became more of a challenge as the other person was patiently waiting for my reply, which was slow and made it difficult for me to communicate what I was thinking or feeling in the moment. It was hard to keep up a conversation, and initially, it was exhausting, but over time and with practice, it became easier, and the person I was speaking with got to know me better. With teachers, particularly those who didn’t know me, I needed to explain to them what my needs were so that I could get the right support for the class. Needs such as extra time, the ability to leave the class to speech-to-text in private, and the use of my technology was key. When teachers would say, “Just write a couple of things quickly and then hand it in”, I would panic as nothing comes quickly. The talk of post-secondary initially stressed me out, but when I looked at it from the perspective of what my abilities are instead of what my difficulties are, I began to think about my future and where my passions could take me.

Below is a video of others expressing what Dyslexia feels like for them.