#learning difficulty

I fully agree with most of what you said, but I want to challenge or push back on something.

Agreement: absolutely! And trying to avoid the word (and thus the existence of disability) is continuing the absolute ableist narrative that disability and being disabled is inherently awful. Most to all disabled people I've talked to from the UK (the person who sent an anonymous ask disagreeing it's a disability is from the UK but I don't know if they're disabled; I'm from the US) say the exact same thing as you when it comes to learning disability versus learning difficulty.

Disagreement: able-bodied is not automatically the same as nondisabled. As far as I'm aware (you and/or others can correct me if I'm wrong), able-bodied means not having a physical disability. And since Dyslexia is not a physical disability, someone can be dyslexic and able-bodied. I do know for a fact that able-bodied doesn't always equal nondisabled.

There are lots of resources out there for understanding what dyscalculia is - books, YouTube videos, Powerpoint slideshows, podcasts. There are lots of math toys and tools and worksheets to offer varying ways to approaching numeracy, too.

What's talked about less is how very emotional the process of confronting a lifelong learning disability is.

A Gallery of Big Feelings I Have Had to Feel Since Deciding, Approximately Two Weeks Ago, That I Wanted to Do Something About My Innumeracy Problem:

Shame

I thought I was kicking shame to the curb by deciding to do something different. Nah. It's still really hard to admit I suck at math.

Basic addition and subtraction (the subject of my recent explorations) feel like something I should have learned to do in elementary school. You know, when the other 29 kids in my class learned it. When all my friends learned it. When the cashier who bantered with me about green onions this morning learned it.

I started this Tumblr because it sucked so much to admit how ashamed I am that I can't math, I figured I'd just tell the entire planet at once and get it over with. Now you know.

[leave your derisive gifs in this slot.]

2. Anger

This Tumblr is called "Maths Screaming" because screaming was pretty much the first and only thing I did for about three days once I started reading about dyscalculia interventions. I screamed in my heart. I screamed in my head. I screamed outside my head, too. I stomped around the high school track and screamed some more. I came home and screamed at a math textbook PDF. I paused YouTube videos to scream. There was a lot of screaming.

I screamed because I was angry.

Confronting anything painful about our pasts often means remembering things we worked hard to forget. Things that hurt to remember. Sometimes, it means reliving some of the worst moments of our lives - especially if what was happened was actually traumatic.

Realizing that not being allowed to use a multiplication table in third grade (no, really!) wasn't traumatic, but it did upset me. Math could have been so much easier than it was at every stage of my education - but I and all my classmates were deprived of those tools and opportunities.

Realizing that leads to

3. Grief

I was widowed in my 30s, so I'd like to believe I'm good at grief. I spent the first three years thinking grief was some kind of game I could win or trophy I could acquire.

"That there is my ability to handle loss. I won it when I was 39."

...Yeah, it doesn't work that way. All loss occasions grief. Each loss is unique, and therefore so is the grief it occasions. And yes, I grieved when I realized just how much I had missed by both struggling with numbers and never receiving support with that struggle.

I don't just mean losses like "I didn't go to medical school" or "I don't understand how the stock market works" (though maybe I am missing out there too). I mean losses like "I could have spent my entire childhood not ashamed and self-loathing for not understanding numbers." And "I could have told my high school boyfriend to jump off a cliff when he laughed at me for still using my fingers, instead of internalizing that and hating myself for it."

Closely related to grief is

4. Love

I gotta tell ya, fam: Deciding that you're going to try to change something that has defined your life for the worse is a radical act of love.

I am doing so much reparenting and re-teaching in this process. I have to be the adult in the room who provides the support and the kid who didn't get support the first time. It takes a lot of love and a lot of patience.

I am extraordinarily grateful that I have (a) the capacity, (b) the skills, and (c) the opportunity to show myself that love. (FYI, THERAPY WORKS.) And at the same time, I grieve here too. Because having to love myself through this process shows me just how much love and care was lacking in my childhood. I can now see just where no one showed up enough to see that I was struggling or to do anything about it.

That's tough to face, and it takes even more love and care to get through it. I understand how easy it would be to just...not bother.

As hard as it is, though, I recommend it. I really do.

Idk if other dyslexic people feel this too but I often forget I can actually read? Even though I’m doing a fecking English lit degree! So it’s really nice to just be able to read for fun!

POSITIVE THING #5: COLOURS

I <3 COLOURFUL THINGS.

I love really bright colours. When I was a baby, apparently I loved yellow things. When I was about 6 I liked pink a lot. When I was 10 I was enamoured by amethyst and turquoise colours. At 15, bright, electric blues and burning reds. As a young woman, I go for deep purples, fuscia, and lots of green. 

Really there’s no colour I don’t like. I like combinations of clashing colours like blue and orange, red and green, or purple and yellow (although this one has been spoiled for me somewhat as it’s the colours of a very racist and homophobic party that governs my home town). 

I’m very sensitive to light and it’s often unpleasant to walk down the street on a sunny day. But on a day when I’m in an open space full of different coloured flowers, or I can see the ocean and the sky, or a valley full of trees in autumn, or fields, it’s not so much like a sensory overload and more like a sensory orgasm (sorry to those who are sex repulsed but I don’t know how else to explain it!).  It fills me with such strong feelings like I want to cry, or laugh, or jump in the air and whoop. I feel like a dog or a rabbit when they get a burst of energy and run through the grass like a rocket. There have been times where I’ve been able to express these feelings, but not often. It’s not really “acceptable” for a grown adult to do these things, so I often photograph things I love or draw them later. Unfortunately, cameras don’t pick up on the intricacy of thne colours or their vividness, and I don’t really draw the thing, I end up drawing a massively exaggerated version of the thing because a line-for-line representation does sod all justice to the way it makes me feel.

My mum grows lots of different coloured flowers in her garden. That home has lots of negative associations, mainly because of her, but one thing she didn’t manage to spoil was the sight of marigolds and montbretia glowing as brightly as the sun itself. And my ginger cat who looked like he was made of pure gold when the sun caught his fur. My favourite photograph of him is him lying down under the montbretia bush like a little fluffy sunbeam.

When I see rainbows I don’t even want to blink because they don’t happen often. I sometimes wonder if they will ever appear again, or whether it’s the last one I’ll ever see. I get the same excitement as I did when I first saw one when I was three years old. It’s like a little cosmic gift. 

When I was on holiday in Cyprus with my boyfriend and his grandparents they found it slightly annoying how I was photographing nearly every Bougainvillea tree I encountered, but they all looked so stunningly beautiful in their own different ways and I didn’t want to forget any of them. They were every shade of pink and orange in front of a sky that was deeper than any blue I’d seen in England. I didn’t want to leave. 

Hey, so its 11:40pm here so i’m tired and emotional and just kinda felt like writing this. But to all of you out there with Specific Learning Disorders*, you are brilliant. We have to fight ten times harder than most other people, never forget that. 

When I first started getting help for my dyspraxia I felt like i’d been given an unfair advantage, getting to type stuff. I thought that I was just dumb, and that I would never be able to express all the ideas and thoughts that were in my head. Well, I’m now a third year at uni, doing slightly above average, and it feels pretty dang great considering how much shit i’v had to swim through. 

So whoever you are out there. Its tough, but youre tougher. You can accomplish anything that everybody else can, and more, because all that extra work you've put in wont just keep you ‘at pace’ with everybody else. It keeps you going long after you've caught up. You keep going long after you've caught up. You’ll be ahead of the game and be so much more ready for the shit that life can throw at you. 

Its tough, but you’re tougher. And you can accomplish great things. 

And the same thing goes for all of our differently abled cousins out there. You’re all awesome.