People often ask, what is it like to have dyslexia. (not very often anymore as everyone I know knows I have dyslexia as I pretty open and chill about it most the time)

I often have no idea how to explain it.

Its mixture of emotions but mostly frustration and anger over not understanding or being able to do something easy. It’s sadness when you wish you could be like everyone else and not understanding why they all can read with no issues etc. It happiness and being proud for when you have worked so hard and you finally achieve the grade or goal you worked months for.

Often days are a blur. Words look like alphabet soup. You have to learn to unscramble the soup and figure out what the words on the page are saying. Often by the time you have unscramble the alphabet soup on that page your peers are 3/4 pages ahead. Its courage to make your self go to school even though you are so worried your teacher may ask you to read something out loud.

Its spending hours longer working on assignment and then by the end of it your too exhausted to try another assignment as it takes all the energy out of you.

Its constant pretending you know what someone just said to you even though by the time you figure it out that part of the conversation is over and the subject has moved on.

It’s fidgeting, biting nails, chewing gum, playing with hair as even though you get told of for it in school it helps you have some focus.

Constant trying to focus but if there is any background noise even someone talking at the back of class you aren’t able to focus and process your tutors words. Like your brain can only focus on one audio at a time

Always struggling to keep up with peers and conversations and really wishing you could have subtitles or a pause and rewind button to stop and go back to whatever you missed and stay paused until your brain catches up.

It’s so much patience and energy. You have to work twice as hard as any neurotypical and the energy and patience it takes to not only complete the work but also not give up before you have completed it is exhausting

It’s constant energy of catching up and trying to unscramble alphabet soup.

Its so much more then can be put into words. Its always wanting to be like any neurotypcial as they don’t have alphabet soup to unscramble in their heads.

but it’s also seeing the word in different ways to everyone else. Creativity.