Entry 5 — Memoir Shard: The Words That Never Came

BLOG SERIES: The Twelve Pages of My Own Cheerleader

PAGE 5 — Memoir Shard: The Words That Never Came

I sat in those rooms trying to explain myself, but the words never arrived in the order I needed them.

They slipped.

They tangled.

They hid behind the fog of hormones and the weight of years spent masking.

I thought it was my fault — that I wasn’t clear enough, calm enough, clever enough.

But the truth was simpler:

I was dyslexic, and no one had ever taught me the language of my own mind.

I could feel everything, but I couldn’t translate it.

I could sense the danger, but I couldn’t articulate it.

I could describe the shape of the problem, but not the vocabulary.

Dyslexia isn’t stupidity.

It’s a different operating system.

And I was 52 before I finally understood that the missing words weren’t a personal failure —

they were a system failure.

The doctors didn’t understand me because I didn’t yet understand myself.

I was already becoming my own cheerleader — I just didn’t know it yet.

Footnote: Twelve future chapters for a book.

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