Struggles

Imagine you are trapped inside a mobile cylindrical glass chamber. Everyone is. That is the norm. The only form of communication is gestures. While most people you know and interact with reside within a clear sort of glass container, the container that you grew up inside is a little cloudy; so much so that one can't see the inside very properly. Everyday, every time you have to interact with someone, they have a problem understanding you because they can't really make out your body movements. It's frustrating to say the least. It is not your fault that you arrived in a murky container. It's quite unfortunate that people must make fun of how abnormal your gestures come out across to them. It becomes so disheartening that you start communicating lesser and lesser until one day you just stop trying to reach out. You and your dirty container.

That is the struggle of having speech impediment. As a child I more or less grew up with this condition. I don't have the obvious and the usual stuttering traits, but I have a hard time saying a certain number of words and beginning my sentences in certain ways. You know how they say, in my head that conversation played out a lot better. Talk about being literal. There are many ways you can say things, and us stammerers always have to route our ways through the easiest ways, where we won't have to stumble into any obstructions. The daily struggle.

As an escape trick, I used to rush headlong into sentences, speaking so fast it would outright severe my clarity. I remember how exhausting it used to be during family events when that became the topic of japes among my relatives. If you remember me as a child who wouldn't speak up much, it is because I had lost my confidence whatsoever of having people understand me at all.

That changed over the years. I would read out newspaper articles aloud hours upon hours on a daily basis. Nepali started to feel cumbersome because it was the language I had spent so many painful years fumbling over, so I switched to English for better. I've been told I sound standoffish because I speak 50% and more English. It is not a choice, it is a habit. I call it survival instinct.