During my interview for a press, the editor in chief was very impressed with the way I spoke. He said I’d be great at public speaking. I smiled and didn’t refute. I had to get the job, yunno? Later on this semester, he asked if I’d like to represent a debate competition, which I politely declined. I said I wasn’t really into public speaking. You want to know the truth?
I stutter.
Maybe you know me in person but never knew this. Read that again.
I've been stuttering for as long as I can remember. It has been one of the biggest problems I've dealt with, a disability in of itself. From being unable to express myself, being unqualified for certain tasks to, as you'd expect, being bullied or made fun of. I've cried more times than I have stumbled on pronouncing 'wh-'
But I've become the me you know by training myself. From picking out my words slowly to intentionally using shorter words, I did everything I could. Much of which was because I was choiceless.
Nothing was more annoying that getting annoyed. My brother and I would get into a fight. We’d march over to my mum.
"Mummy!..."
Then we'd start arguing. I'd get angry and try to recount what happened.
"No! I- i- it was wh- wh- wh-..."
The words would refuse to come out. I'd get even more angry at my tongue and try more forcibly.
"..."
The letters won't even form. Just air hanging in my throat. Then it'd burst out as tears.
Arrgh! I give up.
Of course I'd lose the argument. I had nothing to say and would just end up hearing "Oya sorry, sorry. Don't be rude to your brother." Last borns hate hearing that.
Okay time out. I'm getting teary...
Sometimes my family understood. They could go "Sshhh... calm down. Speak slowly" but sometimes it wasn’t always so. Sometimes they got angry at my pause and yelled at me to speak. What is worse than collective frustration? I would just forget whatever the argument was about and walk away in shame.
It was worse at school. The only person who ever helped was my year 5 teacher who’d shun my classmates for making fun of me. He’d tell me to breathe and speak slowly. It was comforting to hear, but that’s all anyone could say.
But even when I finally got those words out you still couldn't hear me because I'd hurl them out at you with all the force they built up from being piled behind my tongue. I'm a very fast speaker. But that is the cause and not the effect.
In the words of my lesson teacher who also rapped and stammered like me, our brain moves faster than our mouth does so our speech can't accommodate all the ideas flowing out at once. He said it is a hallmark of an intelligent person. I totally agree.
But all that is in the past. I don’t stutter as much anymore. In fact, I hardly do. I don’t stop between syllables as often or struggle to string out words, but it sometimes gets to me when my emotions are heightened. Sometimes, I could even be totally calm. But I’m so used to it I just shut up and think of another word. Rather than ask you "wh- wh- wh- ×10 when is the test?", I’d breathe in, reconfigure, and ask, "Has the time been set yet?" I wouldn’t try "Did they set the time?" 'D' is as hard as 'w’.
It took and still takes a lot of effort. Before I’ve gotten the hang of it. My "condition" made me less vocal, more reserved. I took to writing rather than speaking. But a pen can’t alway carry the weight. And one day in class during the 11th year, mine couldn’t.
I listened. Not to the words of the teacher while he explained databases and their boring types, but to the words of my peers while they mocked the likes of me: stutterers.
They didn't mean to mock me, they were recounting a joke of some video they had seen. But they had forgotten I was a victim. So I sat quietly, unable to laugh, or cry.
We wrapped up and I managed to get through the rest of the day, memories flashing across my mind. I felt attacked and hurt. How could they forget? But then maybe it was my partly my fault. I'd gotten so much better at speaking fluently, most people had probably forgotten the past.
Finally when school was over and I was free to wander wherever I wanted, I tried to find comfort. I went to speak to my friend and told her how I felt. I was going to go deeper into my shell but she held me back and pointed out the fact that my impairment had nothing to do with my mental ability. She related me to others who struggled with disorders and were unable to reach their potential due to the limitations of society. But she added how I'm doing so well by myself and not letting anything hold me back.
That moment with Munira among a lot of other things is what made me a stronger and better speaker. I do write more than I speak now and I'm still afraid of public speaking. But that's not because I stutter so much, but because I still rap. And work on that still has a long way to go.
But what has changed a lot is that I no longer mind being open about myself. I pretty much like sharing my story, like right now. So, when I got the opportunity to apply for a multicultural advancement scholarship during college applications with a prompt asking about my dedication to the advancement of underrepresented groups in America, I wrote about my stutter:
"I might not be American, but from her (Munira's) words I can now relate myself to its society. As a stutterer, I represent the disabled: that part of the population involved in only a little of the activities. Only 3.8% of people in STEM careers are disabled. That's under representation."
And I went on about how people like me need to be seen for their abilities and given more opportunities. Most of this post is in fact from that single essay. I've been referencing it all through while making it longer and, obviously, less of a scholarship application. And yes, I won the scholarship.
It has been quite bumpy, my journey and my speech but I am who I am and becoming the better me I will be. There are a lot of groups of people out there who have been unable to be who they want or do the things they want to do not even because of a disability or lack of skill but sometimes simply because of who they are or how they're perceived. That is really unfair and that, is underepresentation.
To end my essay then and to end this really long melodrama, I said, and still say:
Just like I've picked up my broken words and made them full sentences, I believe we need to bring out those little groups and make society whole.
I was really teary writing this and felt some type of way. If you loved it, don’t forget to clap (up to 50 times!), comment, share, follow, and subscribe. Thank you!
Ramadan Mubarak! 💜
