Dyslexia to me

Dyslexia to me by David F Anderson

Dyslexia affects people differently, and I cannot speak to everybody else's dyslexia; I can tell you what mine is. I can give you an idea of what it is like to have it if you've ever seen the movie 50 First dates. Barrymore and Sandler star in the film. Every day when Drew Barrymore wakes up, she cannot remember yesterday. That truly is what dyslexia is like for me. I watched the same news channel every night, and they say their name at the start of every episode, yet I still can't remember everyone's name.

I can't remember names; I can't remember dates when I would hire someone; it would take me months to learn their name. Almost every morning, I would have to ask someone else on the job what their name is, that's one part of the frustration, and the anger that it brings is unbelievable. I would go home write someone's name down a couple of times, you know, trying to remember it, then the next day you recognize their face, but you can't remember their name

That's the one part of my dyslexia that still makes me angry today; now you add that things don't go in a sequence. They move around on the page when I see them. They seem to jump around on the page and mix each other up. Numbers are the same way. They move around on the page mixing each other up. I can take you through every detail of a project I did years ago. I can remember putting every screw and every nail in every place that it went, but I cannot remember your name from yesterday.

I can look at a home and take it apart in reverse order piece by piece in my mind and see it clear as day. I can look down at a set of blueprints and know exactly where to start and where every board goes. I once designed and duplicated a hand-built copper roof for a family from the video that I seen for 15 minutes on YouTube of two gentlemen repairing a church roof in England.

I can't spell, and I cannot remember a single rule on spelling like I before E except after C. That's the gift of dyslexia; it takes away one ability, and at the same time, it heightens other skills, and I can't read cursive handwriting at all. For years I walked around with this giant chip on my shoulder; I was mad at the world like they had deprived me of something. I thought to myself somehow that dyslexia had shortchanged me; I wasn't quite whole.

Can you imagine the frustration I couldn't remember people's names that I spoke to yesterday? When you're writing your own name that you've been writing for 60 years, you have to stop because you forgot what comes after the a? If you write a number down, you have to go over it at least three or four times to make sure from every angle it is correct. The insecurity in the sheer helplessness you feel when you have dyslexia.

Those feelings at times can be overwhelming; you're ashamed of yourself, you're ashamed of what you can't do even though you can't help it. When I wanted to do something, I always figured out a way how to do it. And I still look back and feel like there's so much I could have done and didn't get a chance to.

People like to talk about what they can do instead of what they can't. We don't like admitting there are things that we can't do. It means I would have to admit that I'm vulnerable. I hope you have a better idea of what dyslexia is like for me. It's not just a minor trouble spelling; it's way more than that for me, at least.

Even though I did not want it to be, it was a force that shaped my life, good or bad that's what it did. Dyslexia is life-altering. It requires all your attention and focuses on making sure it doesn't devour your entire life. It is taking me my whole life to get to this point where I accept who I am and what dyslexia is in my life.