Coloring Outside The Lines...

Chapter 1 

His sister left the office after her typical tormenting, but he enjoyed it when she stopped by and she knew it. After she evacuated from his desk revealing the file and pens she had hidden. He finally was able to locate them resting under the pages. He technically found them by accident trying to retrieve said file, but he’d take the win. As he looked at his files he noticed that they were the ones that he both dreaded and avoided simultaneously, like a day that wouldn’t allow for a nap and a snack. They were torture. These were the types of files that required him to write, but not only did he need to write, others would be reading them so they needed to be professional. But it wasn’t the professionalism that was slithering the anxiety around him and causing his hands to be almost clammy, squeezing him like a python, it was the writing detail. He whipped his phone out as he clicked his pen into sports mode. And he opened his text chain to his sister, whose last vapers of personality had since dissolved. He uses her text thread to double-check his spelling because this is a man who can never spell: “unfortunately”,“regrettably”, and “Wednesday” (why add the D?). Honestly, he can’t ever spell most days of the week. “Friday'' he likes to spell it as it sounds fry-day and “Tuesday”...why add another way to spell “to”? Isn’t “to”, “too”, and “two” enough? So he makes sure that when handwriting anything out, he types it and checks the dictionary to make sure he selected the correct auto-corrected word. Although, occasionally (another word he can’t ever get right) auto-correct either doesn’t have a clue what he typed or finally decides that the misspelled word is a part of his regular dictionary. And why does he go to his sister's text thread instead of his notes or another party? Well if his phone happened to stare back at him through its number-coded, question-filled eyes, he could ask her and she would be able to investigate enough to send the correct word back, but she was also his safe place for not being able to spell at the level most do in the phase of life that he graced. After a life of being a joke for misspelled words and always being directionally challenged, one learned who they could lean on. But, school… school was a nightmare for him. 

Chapter 2

School for him felt like a marathon he kept tripping through and could never find the end of - or like he was placed in a glass box suffocating for everyone to watch as he struggled to lift a weight that no one else seemed to have a problem carrying. He often sat through his classes low in his seat praying the teacher never saw him, but the invisible cloak he ordered turned out to be a fake.

“The class will now each read a sentence from our chapter, let’s start on the right and work around to the back.” His old high school teacher would impose causing his skin to burst into flames while bouncing his knee as if he were resting on a trampoline. He would nervously count the heads before him to track down his sentence so he would be able to run a rehearsal then a dress rehearsal and maybe another to pin it down so no words entered the stage wobbling or in the wrong costume. 

He would raise his hand realizing he had miscounted and was now lost in the sea of students who all stared with expectant eyes. “Which sentence are we now on?” He felt as if he had pulled out a compact and applied blush with how his classmates all looked at him drawing the warmth to rise to the surface of his cheeks. 

“First sentence, third paragraph.” His teacher would say patiently. He would then stumble through it. Jumping lines, swapping letters, working on de-scrambling words, but he would push through. Reading was a nightmare, but his Spanish class was a horror movie. Not to mention the amount of tests that he knew the answers to, but sitting down to write them, felt as if he was playing extreme hide and seek as he slowly read through the questions having no memory of the answers. Needless to say, he couldn't retrieve his diplomas fast enough. But, he never understood why school always felt like he was walking through mud regardless of trying his hardest. 

Chapter 4

Flashback-forward to him sitting at his desk. He looked down and noticed that he had read the instructions completely wrong. After an annoyed little chuckle, he dove back in to try again, but became distracted and started reading another file. 

“Hey!” His friend popped up behind him to hover over his shoulder like a helicopter just before landing. 

“Oh gosh!” He placed his hand on his chest at the sudden shock of her voice. 

“Whatcha working on?” She leaned a little further over his shoulder, but he casually placed his elbow over his work so he could “turn to get a better angle to talk'' hiding his files from view. He has worked a lot on overcoming and being more confident. However, insecurities like to sneak in. His PTSD of years being laughed at or asked why he couldn’t read, or spell, why he miss pronounced things, or why he could never understand word problems in math caused him to second guess the monumental progress that he had been working through. 

“Gosh, those files. How did you get stuck with those again?” If she noticed his change in demeanor she didn’t mention it. 

“Yeah, I know right? Boss just really likes to make my days have some…sparkle to them!” He threw his hands up in a jazz hand pizazz motion. “Hey, you see my sister?”

“Yeah! I feel like I haven’t seen that woman in months!” She then stared at my wall for a few seconds.

“It has been a minute. She likes you, thinks you're great!” He angled himself back to his desk.

“Well good, because I think the same about her.” She began to walk past my desk and onto the kitchen. She looked back at my wall and then looked at her shoes with a shake of her head and a hidden smile behind a curtain of hair.

“What?!” He looked around.

“Nothin…” She shook her head and painted a smirk just below the amused glitter in her eyes as she walked away. He took several long minutes staring at his belongings glancing several times over at his calendar that brought a sense of vacation to his otherwise generic cubicle. But, his mind never registered the change in the month that his sister was kind enough to play with while visiting his desk. Finally, after a lengthy stare-down did his mind catch up. 

Chapter 5 

After switching the calendar back, he put his head down and got to work. Although he spent a significant amount of years: questioning his abilities, thinking he wasn’t smart, struggling to keep pace with his friends, and feeling anxious when others would show him things, needing to read quickly to then simply make up an answer or fake laugh because he was slower than they were, and hiding in the bathroom when it was his turn to be it at game night playing any reading/writing game, not being able to comprehend multi-step instructions as easily, having people stop listening to him when he would have a hard time summarizing a story and the list continued. He never allowed those things to define him and hold him back. A year ago he learned he was Dyslexic and that opened the door to grace that he wasn’t different, he simply had a hurdle that now caused him to be stronger because of it. His FOMO is something that lives in the front of his mind, but his Dyslexia is something that allows him to push himself harder and allow himself to understand he does have limitations, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try. 

Chapter 6 

I finally decided I was Dyslexic about four years ago. My sister and I randomly looked up the symptoms only for me to check off each box. And since learning more about it, I realized that so many areas of my life are laced with it. I struggled in school not understanding why. Now understanding and learning more about why I struggled I can walk forward with a better understanding of my reactions and responses. Dyslexia is a reason not an excuse. It is a reason for things being more of a challenge and why I don’t process things the same as everyone else. But, it is not an excuse for me to not try or to expect things to be made easy for me. With how common it is to hear of someone having Dyslexia, ADHD, or something similar, it can be easy for us to become immune or brush them off. Forgetting that their brains work differently causing their abilities to be different and even adding different personality traits. I am still discovering so much about this and find it to be a superpower because I have something to hold hands with as I face the world showing me how strong and capable I can be. It is pretty cool learning that there are answers beyond thinking I'm not astute. 

Ok, this one may have inched a little longer than normal, but this is such a fascinating and in-depth topic. It is so much more than backward B’s and D’s or confused lefts and rights. I hope that you were either able to learn a little more about Dyslexia or if you think or maybe are in the same boat as me, I hope that this was encouraging. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me to the end, and enjoy the weekend! Don’t forget to share this, subscribe, follow on Instagram, and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading Allie-cats!

• Dru Allie