My Dyslexia: A Curse or a Blessing?
By: Melissa Muth
Tags: Disability, Life Lessons, Personal Growth, Education, Self

This might come as a surprise and a shock to all of you, but yes I do have dyslexia. It might surprise you even more that I had no idea that I had dyslexia until I was in my senior year of college. I know, I can hear your thoughts already: “how could you not know? A disability like that isn’t exactly something you can’t be aware of…especially the majority of your life.”

The start of a journey

As most of you know, I grew up in a Catholic school, and before I entered the school, the administrators denied my access to attend on the grounds of not being “ready yet.” My parents, feeling frustrated, complied with the administrators and held me back one year.

However, the next year, the same thing happened again where they didn’t want me to attend. This led my parents to ask the administrators why they were holding me back and the school replied:

“Your daughter can’t read.”

Clearly there was something wrong with me and my ability to learn. So my parents took me to a psychologist and discovered that I did indeed have dyslexia. Apparently I gave myself away from the very first test just by walking into the room.

Without the help of my parents, I was instructed to sit at the desk that was meant for my writing dominant hand. I am right-handed, so I should have walked over to the right-handed desk, but did little Melissa walk over to that desk? Nope. I intentionally walked over to the left-handed desk which embarrassed my parents. I had argued with them later that the reason why I had chosen the left-handed desk was due to the bookcase stationed on that side of the room.

I was a kid who loved picture books so I wanted to sit near the things I liked. The right-handed desk was stationed right next to the office window where you could easily see the receptionist desk as well as other bustling people racing pass by. So technically speaking, I didn’t think it was entirely fair to judge a child for not following directions when I really wanted to sit in the left-handed desk as a right-handed writer.

An awkward training period

Before I started the first grade, my parents tried on their own to teach me to read. I can clearly remember sitting in my dad’s lap with a book in my hands where I wanted him to read me a story.

My dad wanted to teach me to read so he coaxed me into trying to read by sounding out the words. However, I remember staring intently at the book’s picture without any remote interest in the words. As my dad started to lose patience, he encouraged me again to try reading the words.

This is one of my earliest memories of discovering how much I disliked reading. The words just looked different. Nothing made sense to me. I feel like the best way to describe what I was looking at is by saying it looked like the Elvish language on the glowing One Ring of Power from Lord of the Rings. Again, by having dyslexia, it’s difficult for me to describe what I saw except that nothing made sense to me; just a bunch of zigzags and blurs.

After many educational sessions, my parents had done enough for me to bypass the school’s requirements so I could attend school with the first grade class.

As you can already predict, I struggled with math and reading. My teacher informed my parents about my continuing struggle with the two topics. As odd as it seems, a Catholic school educator wasn’t equipped with the knowledge on how to help students with learning disabilities like dyslexia. For all I know, maybe it was all fairly new at the time and I was simply one of the earliest people who had to endure this awkward time period.

After school every day, my parents would drive me to see a specialist who helped with reading. Now, as a kid, all I wanted to do was to go home right away and play with my dolls, dinosaurs, or safari animals. I wasn’t enthusiastic about these extra school sessions with an older woman who seemed to have gone through a lot of trials and errors just to get me to understand ‘basic’ reading. After some time in these extra sessions, my reading ability did improve. Despite all that, I still wasn’t enthusiastic to read. This was during the time when the first Harry Potter book was released and practically everyone in my class was reading this book. (Yes it is a Catholic school that banned Pokemon cards, yet they somehow okayed students to read Harry Potter. Truly odd.)

Due to my interest in Egyptology, I would often check out many books from the library about ancient Egypt (although let’s be real here, I never did read them; I just loved looking at the artwork and treasures because hell yes I would). So I always seemed to give off the impression that I liked to read but even back then I had no idea what kinds of books I would like and I typically stuck with my Egypt books out of habit. It also didn’t help my situation that the boy I had a crush on also loved reading the ancient Egyptian books, but that’s a separate thing entirely.

“You are a retard”

Like most children growing up, I was a victim of bullying. Due to how slow my learning process was and how much teachers had to tend to me to make sure I was keeping up, my bullies would taunt: “You are a retard!”

Again, I need to emphasize that I was not aware that I had a learning disability. I honestly, from the bottom of my heart, believed that I was in fact, stupid. It broke my heart every time I heard those words. Those were the same words that would echo into my head before falling asleep at night. I remember more times where I often cried myself to sleep over the bullies who hated me and called me a retard. Even as an adult, I still have those memories that haunt me and make me feel ashamed that I wasn’t smart enough for my teachers or classmates.

In the first grade, I struggled so badly with my spelling tests that I actually cheated on one spelling test. While trying to study at home, my mom encouraged me to take my study sheet with me to school. Now my tiny brain understood that I could use the study sheet to cheat. What she meant was for me to study the sheet while waiting in line before school starts, so I had more time to absorb the material.

Later that day, I told my mom that I cheated on the spelling test. My mom then told my teacher what I did. Rather than pull me aside to have a serious talk with me. My teacher pulled me in front of the entire class and scolded me for what I did. The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop (yes, even if the classroom was carpeted). Disappointment sprang across the faces of my peers, the bullies who loved to pick on me merely absorbed all they could to use at ammunition against me on the playground later at recess. Which they did.

Rest assured, I never cheated on any test ever again.

Too dumb to live

As for what was previously mentioned, the main reason why I was bullied was because of my dyslexia. Granted, none of my teachers openly told the class that I had it, otherwise, I would think that maybe the bullies would lay off me. (And perhaps that I would remember having the condition.) But no, this information seemed to be dusted under the rug, leaving me to live this life through the lens that I was purely stupid. Plain and simple.

You can read up on how I was bullied by a teacher because of my disability in the following article:

There you will find that one teacher got furiously frustrated with me for not being able to understand things on the same level as the rest of my classmates. It was due to the bullying that I would often conclude that I was better off in this world simply by being dead. The call of the void would mock me by saying, “You are too dumb to live…”

A valid point, I suppose. After all, if I was struggling with my education, what was the point in me trying to live in society if I couldn’t understand it or be smart enough to survive in it?

Let me tell you something: the reason why I believe I am here today is simply because I’m a coward. Even though contemplating suicide was a constant thing for me in Catholic school, I could never commit to doing it as I was afraid of death. I am afraid of the unknown. Well, that and perhaps the fact that my religious upbringing also stated that I would go to hell if I just axed myself off from this planet… so there was that too.

Just to save time, I will go ahead and state that when I transitioned to public school, to high school, to college… I still struggled with learning to a certain extent. Yes, my reading has improved a lot during the course of that time. In fact, I learned to love reading as I found books that I enjoyed just for fun.

I’m also a fast reader, as long as I don’t read out loud. Yes, to this day, I hate any teacher that I ever had that forced us to read out loud. That is where my dyslexia is highlighted to the max: when I tripped over words, even those I knew the sounds of in my head. But reading it out loud, it made me trip and butcher my words like I was back in the first grade again.

The moment I was told I have dyslexia

I can only praise those who are naturally gifted in learning foreign languages. It was painfully hard for me to grasp the idea of learning a new language. (Oddly enough, I had days where I felt like I could hardly understand my own!)

As part of the school criteria, we had to know at least one foreign language before graduating from college. I stupidly refused to take it in high school because I knew I wanted to be a writer so I didn’t have to learn another language just to write books in my own native English language. At the high school level, I came to the realization that I loved reading all thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien and Sherrilyn Kenyon. Anyways, I tried learning a language everyone said would be easy: Spanish.

As you can already guess, I struggled very badly. I still got a passing C in a college-level class, though I did note that I was never going to get better than what I had already done.

So now you’re asking, “what does learning Spanish have anything to do with dyslexia?” Well, this was my final year at college and this was when I was finally told that I had dyslexia. It was late one night that I was studying for a Spanish exam and slowly but surely I was getting very tired.

Mentally, I had been kicking myself into giving up because there was no point in me putting an effort into learning something I was clearly struggling in.

While I was studying, the vision in my eyes started to warp. The edges of my Spanish worksheet were starting to blur out and before I knew it, the words in front of me started to change. Any letter B’s turned into Q’s. Any letter F’s had turned into T’s.

It was very clear to me that as my eyes widened with shock, the language that I was trying to study was taking on a new form entirely.

I instantly concluded that I had studied long enough and called it a night. It all had to have been a figment of my imagination — a trick in the mind due to fatigue. Later when I came home to visit my family from school, I told my mom about what I experienced.

It was then that she said, “Oh, that sounds like your dyslexia.”

I was completely shell-shocked. I told her that I didn’t have dyslexia and that it might have been my fatigue that altered what I was seeing during my study period. But no, she insisted it was dyslexia. As the argument escalated, my mother connected the dots for me by stating it was the main reason why I wasn’t accepted into school in the first grade. It was the reason I was sent to be seen by a psychologist. It was the reason why I was forced to see this tutor later after school to help me with reading.

What hurt even more about this situation was how my mom seemed to look at me like I was stupid for not knowing that I had a disability. I honestly had no idea I was cursed with this condition…

Conclusion: was my dyslexia a curse or a blessing?

It might be fairly clear to conclude that any kind of learning disability can be seen as a curse. Needless to say, it was an absolute challenge for me trying to coast through life under the notion that I was too dumb to succeed. It sucked that school was hard for me. It sucked that it ruined any relationship I had or could have had. It sucked that I was treated differently. It sucked that I was bullied for it.

So yes, it is a curse.

However, by enduring the things that I have, I believe it made me a better person in the long run.

I believe my dyslexia developed my character as a person.

The fact that I was able to overcome my dyslexia or at least keep it contained to a certain aspect where I could finally keep up on a college level is remarkable. I was never the type of prideful person to show off any kind of achievement, but to live the majority of my life not knowing I had this condition made me play the educational game on Hard Mode, and dammit, I won.

Granted, did I want to play this game of life on Hard Mode? Hell no. But did I finally beat the game? I sure did.

Right now, I’m sitting on a bachelor's degree with my major in Professional Writing and my minor in Creative Writing. The journey was long and difficult but I made it.

I would consider my dyslexia as a simple blessing in disguise.

With all that being said, if you have dyslexia or any kind of learning disability, please know: you are a strong individual. Life may have set you up for Hard Mode, but you can win the game in the end.

Yes, my cowardice kept me alive. My will to survive kept me on the course I was meant to take. Yes, it was a challenge on the road to my education. But if I can do it, so can you. You can overcome your disability. You can rise up knowing you took the harder road to achieve what you wanted.

For others, it might have been easier. But your difficult path will make you a much stronger person and a force to reckon with. The world will be impressed with what you can do. You just need to keep going. Keep pushing. Keep adapting. Things will get better and the reward, in the end, is well worth it.

Thank you all for reading. Please feel free to share your experiences or comments in the response section below!