Content
My Stutter and Me Hey everybody , Im a 24 year old guy from Pennsylvania , and I’ve had my stutter since I could first speak . Growing up , I was an only child raised by a single mom , and she tried the best she could to help me with it . I don’t really think she understood the impact stuttering has on a young kid and the bullying I endured because of it . Kids used to chase after me and make the noise of a telephone when you have bad service to imitate how I spoke . Speech therapy was a constant occurrence in my life , but I always refused to practice . It seemed easier for me to pretend that I didn’t have a stutter than to deal with it . I found solace in books or video games , where I could escape and be a strong warrior or brave adventurer instead of a chubby kid with a stutter . Additionally, my mom would constantly correct me when I messed up on a word which also lessened my desire to practice and just made me angry, because of course , I could hear when I made a mistake . She used to tell me that my stutter kept me up at night , and the speech therapists told her it could be reduced if I just practiced and my mom was worried the stutter would hold me back in life . She and I would often get into screaming matches over my stutter , because I would tell her not to correct me , and so did the speech therapists but she didn’t listen and just told me to practice . In hindsight , I should have practiced , but it was easier in my head not to . My stutter always made it hard to say my first name , so I would have to add “its “ or “um” in front of my name , and times when kids would have to sit in a circle and introduce themselves was my version of hell . Reading in class was always hard , but once I transferred schools to a Waldorf school in middle school, at least the reaction from my classmates was better . Still , I didn’t practice and sort of accepted that my stutter was just a part of me , while my mom of course did not . I knew she cared deeply , it was just hard sometimes to see that . Ever since I was a kid , I wanted to be in politics cs , history was my favorite thing , and while most kids were reading comic books , I was reading biographies about JFK, FDR etc . When college came around , I decided to major in political science and American studies , and was determined I was going to go to law school after and work in politics . I had always struggled socially and would often apologize to people for being awk , even though I wasn’t being awk until I said that… anyways , my stutter contributed a lot to this , and eventually I put myself in regular therapy and got diagnosed with anxiety , realizing that my stutter was worse when I was anxious . People had always told me that I was very handsome , but in my head , I was still that fat kid that stuttered , so having girls be attracted to me in college was a strange new phenomenon. In my junior year , I had the chance to work for a presidential campaign in a paid capacity , and soon realized that I couldn’t make a career out of politics due to all of the polarization and hate on both sides . Of course , my experience was just a microcosm of working in politics , but I wanted to find something else . This is what I always tell people , when they ask me why I’m not in poltiics anymore , and it’s a major reason , but it’s only part of the reason . In all honesty, the idea of having to stand in front of a group of people and give a campaign speech scared the shit out of me . Long story short , I had the chance to work at a pediatric hospital and am now getting ready to go into medical school and am in a long term stable relationship . My stutter is still very much here , and drives me nuts . Lately with th sounds I’ve been sticking my tongue out to get stuff out and I constantly have blockages , but at other times I’m perfectly fluent . I’m so used to my stutter at this point , but I think it is a major component of my anxiety and makes me doubt myself . Still, I have no desire to practice , and I’m just confused and so I wanted to share my story here and see if anyone had any similar experiences. I stopped speech therapy when I was in sixth grade and started it again when I was eighteen and would be on a role for a while but then stop practicing each time …