I am somebody who suffered with a stuttering/stammering speech impediment for eighteen years. The stammer/stutter (some people call it a stammer, whilst others refer to it as a stutter) caused me many problems in my young life and it was something that I was desperate to overcome. In this article I am going to write about some of the ways in which it ruined my life which I hope will educate fluent people into what it is like to have a stutter. Hopefully these readers will then show more empathy to the people they meet who suffer with this form of disability.
During my time at high school, I would at times be asked to read a paragraph out of a reading book in front of the whole class. Now to be fair to read this paragraph just to the teacher would have proven to be some what difficult for me, therefore you can imagine just how hard it was to read it in front of thirty of my so called classmates. I had a phobia on certain words and before it was my turn to read I would often look at the paragraph that I was likely to have to read to see how many of these words were included. Obviously I would hope that there would not be any but there was always at least one and more often than not there would be quite a few. This would lead me into a state of panic and stress and would without doubt result in me stuttering when reading the text. Some of these classmates would then start to laugh which would really annoy and hurt me.
I am by nature a born worrier and would often lose out on sleep at night as I was over-anxious worrying about the next day. I hated having the stutter and hated being laughed at. I would worry that I might be asked to read on this next day and would imagine how it would make me feel.
As I grew older the stutter continued to dictate my life. It was now affecting my ability to meet women and to socialise in general. I even had a fear and phobia of ordering drinks at a bar. As an example on one night out, a friend asked if I would buy him a bottle of red when it was my turn to go to the bar. Everyone else was drinking pints of lager, something I felt confident about ordering. As I approached the bar I doubted whether I would be able to say the words bottle or red and instead just ordered him a pint of lager. To say six pints of lager please was a lot easier than asking for five pints of lager and a bottle of red. My friend was quite shocked when I handed him the pint of lager but I just acted like I was stupid by stating that I had merely forgotten etc.
