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What a Demigod Taught Me

Dealing with Dyslexia

By Keegan GrayPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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I was very young when I noticed I wasn't a normal student. My spelling skills were subpar, I wasn't able to read as smoothly as my peers, I would mix up words, and numbers would switch places. After months, it was determined that I had dyslexia. Dyslexia, a disorder found in millions of people, is defined as "A learning disorder characterized by difficulty reading."

School is already hard enough, not being able to literally read what's in front of you just adds on a layer of difficulty that is not easily solved. Growing up, I developed an anxiety that stemmed from not being able to read simple words out loud, I hated spelling bees because simple words would jumble in my head and I felt like an idiot not being able to spell them correctly. I spent hours memorizing words for spelling tests to end up with a failing grade.

Even when I did get help, I found myself isolated. I was put into a program to help my dyslexia and over time my overall state improved. To this day I'm still not able to spell all that great but my reading has improved tremendously.

And thank gods it did.

As soon as I was able to read well I dove into piles of books. I tore through the Eragon Series and fell deeply in love with Maximum Ride and of course the Harry Potter series. Every series was a unique experience and encouraged me to read more and discover more. I fell in love with stories and characters. However, to me, there is one series that I fortunately read at such a pivotal point in my life. That series would be Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

For those unfamiliar, Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a series about a troubled boy named Percy Jackson who has been kicked out of several schools for strange things that just keep happening to him. Through a series of events, he finds out that he is the son of Poseidon, the Greek God of the sea. The books go on to describe his life at Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for all the other children of Greek Gods.

Now, why would I connect with such the son of god? Well in the books, Percy is said to suffer from dyslexia. Given the reasoning in the book for this was that his brain was 'hard-wired' for reading Greek. In the books, his dyslexia is made to be a big deal. Rick Riordan, the author, made sure to say that all the other kids at Camp Half Blood had dyslexia.

Now how why I connect to a demigod? Because his dyslexia wasn't seen as a bad thing.

My entire life people were trying to fix my mind so I could learn better. A common symptom of having dyslexia is learning differently than other students, which is a symptom I express. While I'm so grateful that the program I was put into helped me read, teachers tried to get me to learn one way, even if another was easier for me to understand. They wanted to put me into a box I was clearly not fitting into. Many teachers didn't like me throughout my school career because I didn't learn the way they taught. I was often one of the least favorite of the teachers because of this, which any student who's been in the same position knows that makes school that much less enjoyable.

But reading this book and seeing dyslexia as an almost superpower rather than something that should be corrected, I felt connected to a character like I never had before just because of this simple detail. I understood why Percy was so frustrated with himself and with school because that's what I felt. I knew what it felt like to try your best and it still not be good enough.

These books are my Harry Potter. You hear stories about how Harry Potter was the first series people read and they fell in love with the world, the complex storytelling, and mostly, the characters. Percy Jackson and the Olympians was that for me. I saw myself in Percy, I loved the world that Riordan had built from ancient Greek culture. It wasn’t as complex as Harry Potter but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it any less.

These books taught me that there was nothing wrong with me, I was just different. (Sadly not in the demigod kind of way). I wasn’t a screw-up; I was a hero just in need of a satyr to whisk me away to my adventure. It showed me that I could be smart in so many other ways than just being in a classroom.

Given I’ve read so many other books since I finished the Percy Jackson series, none have meant as much as those did. To this day I still love those books, not just because of the quality content but what they meant to me. I want every kid who has dyslexia to read this book. They need to know that they are not failures, they need to know that there is nothing wrong with them but rather they are just heroes. This book means so much to me and I know it will have the same effect for years to come.

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About the Creator

Keegan Gray

Just an amateur college writer just sharing her two cents

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