Differently Abled (fly your freak flag high)

[friskyfemme]

Originally Posted by SuperFemme

I'd like to have a discussion about invisible disablities.

This thought is spawned by the Food Stamp thread, and the fact that so many people look down upon and judge those who are seemingly "capable and able to work".

Sigh.

My brain injury is invisible.
My leukemia is invisible.

For the first five years after my accident I was so ANGRY because I wanted to work. I cannot tell you how next to impossible it is for me to track things, multi-task, let alone the short term memory issues that leave me looking quite the fool because I had no idea that I had that conversation with somebody an hour ago.

Then along comes cancer, and there are days when my body is a living hell.

Today somewhere I read cancer = prvilige and I had to literally turn off my computer I was so hurt.

So those of you with Aspergers, ADD, Dyslexia, MS, Depression, Cancer, and the hundred other invisible disabilites...do you ever get fucking tired of having to quantify yourself to people?

Does it hurt you that some think you are deserving of assistance whilst others are not?

I really am just a normal girl, with some quirks that make my abilities different.

I don't want pity. I want understanding, which IMHO is so much different. I feel so isolated and misunderstood sometimes. In my perfect world people will judge me for what is on the inside of my beautiful self. The same as the rest of you guys.

I think this is a really important conversation to have.

FriskyFemme, I cannot even begin to imagine the frustration of going through life with dyslexia. It feels so unfair to me that you are just now finding the tools you need. I applaud you for wanting to become a tutor, and I hope you can be a mentor to others on this site who share in your dyslexia. Welcome to the thread, I'm so glad you are hear.

Sometime, if you don't mind, would you share what it's been like for you? How you navigate through a world of forms, books, readings etc? I want to be educated, and while I know I can go read a book (which I am willing to do) a personal journey to me is far more educational. I'd like to know what I as a human being can do to help out.

Thank you for your acknowledgement of my frustration. I have always felt inadequate because I couldn't 'outgrow' dyslexia. I have been lucky to have gotten some helpful tools at least to read for comprehension. Actually the same tools used to teach 'Speed Reading' which I took my first semester in college. These help me to approach reading material in a methodical way (this is key in reading for comprehension). I can go into that further in another post. The problem that still exists is that dyslexia is NOT a reading disorder it IS a language disfunction. You see, written language is not a logical sequence. The letters used to form words don't make sense to me. In English, American English anyway, too many exceptions to rules exist: words that can be a noun, verb, or adjective like the word 'cool'. Also multiple meanings, words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, words that sound the same but spelled differently and have different meanings (sense,since). Unfortunately, reading for comprehension is NOT helpful in tests with essays questions. I often overlook small words like 'not'. Luckily most standardized tests are written in postive terms nowadays.
Dyslexia is found in the gene for language. Pathways in the brain for language are different for us. I learned written language by memorizing every word and detecting words inside words and trying to figure out what the 'whole' word means by it's parts. For instance 'developmental' develop 'create'; mental 'thinking'. Hmmm.
We are very visual thinkers. I commit words to memory by 'seeing' them in my mind and mentally filing them kinda like a thesaurus 'the dinosaur' <- my visual(lol). I have to stop writing for now. I am worn out. I have spent 2 hrs writing this.

I just want to say I would never want to trade my dyslexia for the pain you have endured. You are truly a Superfemme.