Wensday you can fuck right off.
With your random trio of letters in the middle
is it D-N-S or S-N-D
or is there an E in threre?
I say you out loud
syllabil by syllabil
Wens-day
But I know there is a second D in there
Somewhere
Wed-nes-day
But I know Wednesday is not right
Or maybe it is?
In my 35 years of speaking this language
and 30 years of writing it
I have no fucking clue how I am supposed to spell you
And I am sure as hell not surrendering to you now
And looking you up
In fact, I have turned off spellcheck
And for once, I will write how I write
Not try to fix my words desperately
Trying pass as normal
And you are not my only nemesis dear Wendsday
There is no way to undestand
The special madness that
Decides the spelling of beaucracy.
Or colleauge
And why the fuck is there no R in intellect
It is clearly pronounced inter-lect
And why is there no E at the end of tomato?
When its plural is tomatoes
And there is an E at the end of toe
And to is pronounced so differently
And what is up with all the silent Ks?
What are they for?
I declare silent letters entrapment.
A special shoutout to epistemology
Remember that great time we had?
When I taught 7 different classes on you in two weeks?
And in each class I stood in front of the whiteboard
Staring at you
Epistimology
Epistomology
And sometimes I would remember that you were related to epesteme
And then I could work it out
And sometimes I would turn to the students
And someone would give me the spelling letter by letter
And I would try to fix what was wrong
But staring at your six sillabuls in marker
I would still not be able to work out where I went wrong
And this wasn’t any easier the seventh time
Than the first one
But really
I have no beef with you
You words never meant me any harm
You who bought me so much pleasure and joy
You gave me beauty
It is not you who made me feel dumb
It is those who felt the need to enforce your arbitary rules
Those who told me again and again
That I needed to take more care
When I was already spending so much time
Trying to fix mistakes
That were invisible to me
Congratulations to the arsehole
Who invented vocaublary tests
Meant to catch people like me out
Who try so hard to do things right
Learn all the rules
To spell phoenetically
To learn how things are spelled by how they are pronounced
And then you invent a test to see if we know the exceptions
Of course I fucking don’t
And no matter how much I study
I cannot memorize these arbitary facts
My brain does not remember
Meaningless information
And I hope you are enjoying your rightious indignation
All those lecturers who
Read my exam papers
And told me my mistakes were careless
When I put so much care
Into constructing my arguments
In developing a narrative
In building theory
And understanding the complexities of the world
Because while I can’t remember arbitrary spelling
I can understand complexity
I can see things invisible to others
Connections
Patterns
Because dyslexia is so much more than an inability to spell
It’s the ability to take in information
More fully
It is the ability to not focus on not just one thing
But to experience and remember that much more
It is the ability to pick things up
Instinctually
Creatively
To think outside the old pathways
And I am so so pissed off
When I remember all the teachers
Who instead of nurturing that talent
Made me feel dumb
And maybe they would have treated me better
Had I been diagnosed earlier
But who knows
What damage a diagnosis does
And if I would have been able
To understand that being disabled
Means nothing more than the world
Not being built for you
And I shouldn’t need a diagnosis
To just live in this world
And neither should anyone else
So congratulations to all of you
Who told me I how much I was doing wrong
Over and over
It worked
You made me feel wrong
You made me believe I was lazy
And careless
And it’s only now that I am unlearning.
Thinking in the Open 