So I meant to start this blog a long, long time ago....probably in a galaxy far, far away but sometimes life gets in the way of best intentions...
So as the title of my blog suggests, I have a stammer. This is something as recently as four years ago I wouldn't have spoken about with my nearest and dearest let alone the big, wide world of internet blogdom.
My stammer was my secret. In fact, even the word secret makes if sound like something quite exciting, quite glamorous so really 'secret' doesn't really do justice to the denial, self-loathing, frustration and all the other negative adjectives that go with stammering.
Covert stammering was a term unknown to me four years ago. I knew I had the 'stammerer' label from going through speech therapy as a child but I was beyond what I thought to be stammering; I could just no longer speak sometimes, maybe if I'd have tried hard enough I could have stammered through a blocked word but my block developed into silence. The dreaded word would come charging over the horizon in glorious technicolor only to land at the back of my throat with the menace of a stubborn child, refusing to go any further, leaving me with a mouth full of nothing, a head full of the dreaded word leaping up and down, pulling tongues at me and making me feel like the most incompetent, worthless individual.
So welcome to the world of covert stammering. A world where nobody knows you have difficulties communicating; a world where ordering your favourite drink or favourite food becomes a sometimes unobtainable reality; a world where you've shut so many people out of your struggle that there's only you left to turn to and most of the time, all you know how to do is to beat yourself over your inability to utter your own name.
Stammering is so little understood and so difficult to explain that it is rarely spoken about at all. Imagine approaching the dentist reception, knowing you've got to say your name to let the receptionist know you're here. Imagine playing your name over and over in your head and then you get to the reception desk and something happens, you can't get your name out, something has got its hands around your neck, constricting your speech and nothing comes out at all. So you spell out your name instead, or write it down on a bit of paper then slope off to the waiting room, carrying the biggest, most hideous burden of self-pity, embarrassment and frustration with you.
So that's what life was like for me four years ago. Life has changed beyond recognition, for a whole host of reasons but in relation to my stammer, it's been the acceptance of it as part of me that has been the most liberating part of the journey I'm on.
I'd like this blog to serve two purposes; to be educational to those who do not stammer and to be inspirational to those who do. Inspirational in a sense that if you haven't already done something to begin your recovery, then to inspire you to do so, and inspirational in the sense that if you are already on your journey, to inspire you to keep going; that I'm with you walking in your shoes and sometimes it's a good day and then there will be some days we just need to put behind us and move on.
I hope you will enjoy following me on my journey. I'd certainly like the company!
