I've had a stutter for as long as I can remember, and it has truly impacted my life. I'm just not sure if it's impacted my life in a negative or positive way.
I started realizing I talked differently from other kids when I was about 12 years old, and I'll never forget how I came to that realization. It was in gym class, and while I was walking around with my friends, I went to say something and I struggled to get the word out. After attempting to say the word, I don't remember exactly what I was saying, one of the girls I was talking to mocked me and began laughing. At this point, of course, I was in tears. And that's the moment that changed everything.
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I started to seclude myself. I became very quiet, and every time I talked I would always have to think of what I was going to say before I said it so I wouldn't completely ruin the sentence. I know that sounds very confusing, but it actually worked, most of the time. When I did slip up, and stutter, it was so embarrassing; I would always think about that time in gym class. It basically made me want to crawl into a hole, and just live there.
After years of the constant need to not say anything, I started college. I thought when I got to Troy I would really open up and either embrace my stutter or go to speech therapy and try to delete it. Neither one of those scenarios became my reality. Instead, I freaked out even more when classes started because in every class we would have to introduce ourselves. I would catch myself practicing what I was going to say in hopes it would prevent my stutter. It went something like this: "My name is Morgan Phillips, I'm from Luverne, Ala., and I'm a journalism major." Like I said earlier, sometimes it came out so smoothly, and other times it was like I was constantly falling and just hoping I could keep myself up.
Now, let's fast forward a couple of years. To this day, I still struggle with stuttering. I'm currently medicated to treat my anxiety, which stems from my speech impediment. These aren't some magical pills that take my anxiety away or deletes the stutter from my hard drive, that's what I call my brain, but they do help me cope with the reality of the situation.
The reality is that I will probably always stutter. I will probably always have moments when I'm speaking and I can't say my name without repeatedly sounding the letter M a couple of times. Am I comfortable with that? Absolutely not, but I am learning to accept it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves all the time. There are some things in life we just cannot control, and that's OK. My hope is that we all learn to embrace our own diversities because life would be so boring without them.
