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At My Breaking Point Hi everybody! After finding this subreddit earlier and reading some posts I've decided to create an appropriately named throwaway account and post how I'm feeling living with my stutter. I'm in my early 20s and have had a stutter since a very young age. I had "glue ear" as a child which lead me to talking like a deaf person would. This lasted until I was around 5 and ever since then, I've had a stutter. A pretty obvious and at times severe one. Living in the real world as all of you will already know with a speech problem is a living hell. Ordering food, making phone calls and general chit chat are all things that drive my anxiety through the roof. Talking is a huge effort that I find exhausting but can't be avoided. I work as something very similar to a prison officer. I deal with prisoners on the daily which actually isn't a problem for me, they're surprisingly understanding about it. But even with that said, I feel like a lesser officer because of my speech. I've seen my name taken off what I'm going to call a difficult job and put onto an easier job. It happens too often to be a coincidence in my mind and crushes my confidence. There has even been times I've heard colleagues make negative comments about my speech when they've thought I can no longer hear them. This combined with things happening outside of work, such as multiple failed dates where I've been too anxious to even hold a decent conversation really does make me feel like a sub par person. Like a freak or something I've been called many times recently, undateable. The constant anxiety, rejection and general feeling of zero self worth is really starting to grip me tight. Just scrolling through some of the posts on here brought me to tears. I'm tired of my stutter, I just want to live a normal life and not have to worry about something that most people don't even have to think twice about.