All Non-Fiction is Fiction

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written…. Mark Twain

  I’m dyslexic and not one of those protégés like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs or Steven Spielberg. Like most, I’m unremarkable. Over thirty-five million people in North America have dyslexia, no two alike. We are distinct, and each of us handles our disability differently. Branded by what we cannot do, we can see words at some level before they get jumbled.

  When starting school, we expect to read like everyone else but can’t. Words and letters float around and bizarrely evaporate. Self-doubt and embarrassment set in and haunt. Like others with disabilities, we must compensate and function at our own pace, leaning on those unique capacities that work best for us.

  Where I grew up, no one knew of dyslexia. Outwardly, I appeared awkward and dumb. Inwardly, I struggled to reconcile feeling capable yet not being able to perform. At school and then at work, I did my best to camouflage my condition. Life was tolerable but not easy. I neither changed the world or fell through the cracks, ended up destitute or imprisoned. That said, staying afloat was a struggle.

  There came a time I became aware of my condition. That knowledge offered some relief, but the stigma lingers. Being unremarkable is human. Hiding who you are blunts self-improvement. Living authenticity uplifts the soul and unleashes creativity

  This narrative explores a non-caricatured life, from ignorance to awareness, from being upside down to turning right side up. It offers an insight into how the condition manifests while life progresses. Dyslexia is not all-encompassing; life happens outside its hold. This is my unfolding as I best recall events. I doubt it is at all what you expect.