Stuttering & Stammering A diary of a stutter; his struggles, experiences and anecdotes

Well, I will be visiting one of the new wonders and am very exited. I will spend Christmas and New Year's day there in the magnificent Macchu Picchu located in Cuzco, Peru. I will not be posting and will resume my experiences the first week of January.

I want to share this opportunity to send my best wishes to all my readers and hope all your goals will come true in 2008. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for being part of this blog. And to all the stutters: Lets get the best out of this life and live it to the fullest without complexes !

The torture continues as I run out of time I put positive thoughts in my mind and try to look optimistic and relaxed. These should be exiting times. It is my wedding for crying out loud. However the reality is cruel and damaging. I feel anxious, worried, nervous and a bit depressed. I say to myself "I don't have to go through this. No one is forcing me, why am I supposed to do what people want?" But then I see her, the bride, my girlfriend for nearly 7 years, my future wife; the one person I will give it all for. I can't take this away from her. It is something she has dreamed about all her life. It is then when I see things clearly. I realize that I will go through all of this not because I have to, or want to but because I love her and want to make her happy.

What started as a small family and really close friend reunion was turning into a huge monster. The invitation list grew from 80 to 250 and was threatening to hit the killing 300 mark. The percentage favored my wife with 80% of guest being hers. Yeah, why not throw in a reality show crew and broadcast it live. Gee, now I was in trouble. The small snow ball hit downhill and there was nothing to stop it.

To my surprise, something happened that raised the stutter level to a defcon 4. I had forgotten about a celebration before the big crucial day. Because of my romantic and chessy Peruvian culture there is a family reunion called "la pedida de mano" which literally means the petition of the hand (of the bride's of course). This event consisted in going with my family to the bride's house and opening my heart expressing my reasons and motives to marry her daughter.

Did I say I was screwed? Well, to me, this reunion had one clear meaning. It was the unmasking of the stuttering groom in front of both families. I suddenly got the chill and became even more anxious and frustrated. Why God? What can't I be normal? Why do I have to feel this pressure on my chest and stomach which takes control and does not allow me to be myself. I just want to be able to speak! Is this too much to ask? I have great things to share about my great love for this woman. Damn it! I can even feel poetry within me but this weight doesn't let go of me. I am tired of fighting. I just want to express what I think and feel but I am in this prison. God please, give me clarity at least for these important days. Take this pressure away. If it is not for me do it for my future woman because she well deserves it.

This is all I felt and much more. Still, life goes on and the great day is near and the "pedida de mano" is even closer. As time went by I hated myself more and more and wished I were different. But this is me, this is who I am and there is still strength inside of me to fight on.

So the day was finally near and the arrangements had started. Man was I nervous but it was not the eternal,union what cramped me up but the idea of having to say some words in front of all the people that meant something for me. There was no escape from having to be the center of attention, which I always preferred to avoid. Only thinking of the situation would make my palms water. I had put 2 different scenarios in my head which made my life miserable.

Scenario 1:
I would not be able to say my bows. How horrible this would be. Remember, 5% of the people who know me do not know my stuttering gift. So this would mean that I when I started stuttering not being able to tell my wife, in the day in which she had dreamed about all her life - I tried arranging a very small reunion and not a traditional wedding with a huge negative and a fight included - People would start saying,
- Man is Carlos nervous, he is second guessing
- Yeah, maybe he has another person, you know, these things happen.
- Wow, Sally´s about to be married to a husband who is a retard. (death chuckles)
- I wonder when this is over and people start bringing the free drinks!

I was trying to imagine what to do if any (exept the last which was a given) happened. I would probably try talking faster making it worse probably or just stutter it and go on with the show. The choices of running away or fainting on purpose were going down the list as I tortured myself on this scenario.

Scenario 2
After the bows, the groom often has to give some words and thank everyone. Ummm, well, here at least I can substitute words when my stuttering radar detects a problem approaching. However, as we all stutterers know, substituting words can back fire. When we do this technique sometimes we do not find an appropriate substitute and bring up a wrong word. This word would make your sentence incoherent and in consequence one looks like an idiot.

Examples of substitution problems.

I have loved my wife ever since I (oh oh ... Radar detects that met is going to be a problem... think, what do I say. oh no, time is up. I have loved my wife since all my life. (Shit, I don´t know her all my life, Gee, how do I fix this? Well go on man, people will not notice) This happens very quickly in my head. Not notice? My wife probably has already given me the look like, Hey, who the hell did you know all your life. I am not your ex you jerk.
So substitution can be a good a handy tool but it has its dangers, handle with care!

As you see, I had many things in my head while my wife was so happy and had other normal worries. I tried not to interfere in that and managed to keep it in me.

to be continued...

I bet you would not guess what my occupation is. I think the best one would be a job in which one would easily go by without talking much. Well, I don't know any stutterers to get some feedback on how they manage work so I just put myself in different situations. Once at college I met this man who was in his mid fifties and he stuttered pretty badly. He was a supervisor of grounds on campus and he used the phone quite often. He seemed to have accepted his stuttering and just kept on going. I wonder if one can fully accept stuttering and feel alright with it but that's another story. Anyway, this might throw you off because I accept it is strange. In the past post I talked about frustration but my case, as you will see, is like jumping into a roller coaster.

Enough with the wait. I am a teacher. YEAH! It is ok if you chuckled. How can this be? Is the class a never ending one? Like, goo goo goo good mm mmorning k kk claass. This would really be awful and funny but it is not this way. How? Why? First of all I am an English Teacher, to be precise an ESL (English as a second language) one. I was born in Peru but grew up in the States and then brought back to Peru and went back again to get a degree in the USA. I like to call this the triple culture shock parade. Well, still, how do those classes go? First of all. for some strange reason, I stutter more in Spanish. I do not know why although I have some thoughts. It is not that I do not stutter in English. I do, but it is easier for me to cover it up and to use other words to substitute the stutter words. But that is not why I think I do not have much problems with stuttering at work. I feel that since I get paid, somewhere in my mind, for some reasons, I stutter less with the "crowd" pressure. But this is only in my classes because when I get home and start speaking with my in-laws then my rattle snake awakens! My students do not realize my stuttering. They probably think that is how I talk. I speak with confidence and really am a pretty good teacher. I currently have 3 classes a day and some days are easier than others. Some days I stutter a bit but here is the secret. Since I am the teacher, if I feel that a stuttering word is coming, I can change subjects, ask the student to participate more, or make him or her practice. Well, in other words, work, for now, is not a big problem but I do not know what I would do if this area also gets "infected" by stuttering. At least not all is bad.

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