I Am Scholastically Inept

I can’t edit. Call it dyslexia, call it a lack of thoroughness, but nonetheless I simply can’t edit my own work.

I wish this was just hyperbole, used to arose your emotions, but sadly it’s not.

This is an absolute glaring shortcoming of mine, something that I’ve just learned to accept over the years. Grammar-Nazis alike, scream with excitement as new posts are published, knowing the massive meal of mistakes that surely awaits them. My dyslexic mind served as a massive deterrent for expression for many years, which was difficult for someone who ruminates for far too long on things unsaid. You see, my inner voice is a brilliant wordsmith, an orator for the masses you might say. This often overly stimulated, creative mind of mine is a gift that I’m not sure I will ever be fully capable wielding. I seem to always fall short on taming this powerful source for creation.

My thoughts assemble themselves so cohesively in my mind, but as they make their down to my hands, the thoughts always get seem to get lost in translations somewhere along the way. The sentences start off with impressive flow, but end up going wildly astray by the time the keystrokes land on the page. You would think a simple replication of thought would be easy, but I’ve found in reality that just isn’t the case for me. The more alarming source for confusion takes place as I review my work. Often my mind will cross T’s and dot I’s that I have forgotten and even ads in words that I have completely omitted as I read my work. My mind corrects the writing errors that I have made in transcribing my initial thoughts, and reads it as the thought originally formulated. I read through the work and make minor adjustments and then hit the Publish button, and that is where my self-deception is arrested. My obvious blunders are so easily spotted by readers, and friends and I sit in astonishment at how I have missed such unmistakable errors when they are brought to my attention. A level of self-deception that leaves me scratching my head.

The root of this evil traces all the way back to my younger years. I missed a tremendous amount of school due to ‘illness’. Whether the ailment was due to real or imagined symptoms, my absence didn’t go without consequence. The missed days mostly served as a precautionary defence against difficulties with bullying, rather than physical malady. I guess you could have said that my heart was suffering from a dis-ease alright. Although a failed resolution to bullying, it was all a young boy could think of at the time.  Skipping class provided me a safe refuge from the school yard that often left me emotionally scared. But let me assure you that claiming yourself ill day-in and day-out wasn’t an easy task either. Having to calibrate lies on top of lies took a massive amount of hypervigilance. Being able to activate and play-out multi-layered lies took a certain level of mental acumen that the sick part of my was almost proud of. A lack of trust for in parents, teachers, and school administration encouraged my faulty belief system that helped me arrive at the conclusion  that if I exposed what was really going on for me at school,  that not only would things not be rectified, but I might be then additionally labeled as a whiner too. I couldn’t bare sinking further in the social ranks, so my lips remained permanently sealed. This pain was allocated to solitary confined and would never be revealed to the world. Sadly, the avoidance tactics only extended my punishment. I had to reconcile the lost days of learning in summer school. If I planned on entering the doors of any post secondary establishment I had to upgrade my English 11 and 12 marks following the school year.

Sure, I had to upgrade my grade 11 and 12 English, but in hindsight I was really lucky, or just naturally brilliant. The ladder of course being highly debatable claim. I had missed weeks upon weeks of school every year since grade four. It suffices to say that I missed a few fundamentals along the way. I’m sure its compounding effect definitely aided to my literary defeat.

The point of me outlining this story to you, is not to call for empathetic attention, but rather to encourage you expose your own expression. I believe there is a story that needs to be shared in all of us. I didn’t start to develop the slightest skill of EQ until my late 20’s. To now be able to even identify my emotions, let alone summon the courage to share them with you, didn’t come to fruition with gracefully either. My song still needed to be shared though.

I’m hopeful that my writing will mature with each passing year, but that most certainly isn’t a guarantee. So where my greatest intention now lies is in is with the heart of the message. The icky honesty and vulnerability that serves as an impressive glue in relationship. I know from following and connecting with the work of many talented people, that what really sets these people apart is their emotional relay in their message being shared. Honesty and vulnerability is really people yearn for while reading. It’s also what they deeply connect with, not an authors grammatical prowess. Although, if there is a characteristic that I would like to master in my lifetime, it would be the ability to make others feel loved and hope-filled. At this time, I will bow my head and withdraw myself from the race for the Pulitzer, and let those who were gifted to read and write goodly stake their claim at the title.