I’m done

I’m done I’m 17 and in my senior year of high school. I had to give a 15 minute presentation last week that eventually turned into a complete disaster. My stutter has been unbearably worse this past month, and with the addition of embarrassing secondary behaviors (inhaling/saying “umm” repeatedly), has made even the most simple dialogue a thing of dread. The presentation started out with my friend talking (it was a partner project) and eventually led into my part. Throughout the entire thing, I stuttered pretty much the worse I ever had. I could only get few words out in the span of 30 seconds. I kept repeating syllables and making deathly embarrassing noises that only made my stuttering worse out of panic. I took up the time of the rest of the class period to speak, about 25 minutes. I was strained and exhausted by the end of it. However, that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the class’s reactions. My friend/partner stared at me with contempt for taking up the entire presentation time, and later criticized me for it. People were staring at me with disgust and confusion. I saw some people sleeping throughout parts of it. I wanted to straight up die by the end. My main point is that I’m done. I’ve hated living with this disability, I do hate it, and I’m dreading living with it in the future. My “friends” make fun of me for it all the time, and if I don’t want to lose them (the only social standing I have, even more humiliating as a senior), then I better not complain and confront them about it. Other classmates and strangers view me as a mentally slow person who speaks weirdly, and I feel like that’s how it’s gonna be for the rest of my life. I feel like if I didn’t have a stutter, I would be living a completely different life, living more freely while being unaffected by the shame of stuttering. I just so desperately want to speak like a normal person, I hate having to live with this giant barrier for even most simple social interactions. I hate being seen as a complete, unrelatable freak for something I can’t control. I hate being forever seen as an oddity. I hate having to live in constant anxiety over this. I don’t feel like this is a life worth living.