Just Give Me A Moment

Today, I stuttered openly at my work while I was in court presenting a case. It was for a couple of moments at most, but it felt like it lasted forever. A few people around exchanged glances and then looked back at me in a way I interpreted as, "What's wrong with her?" like I was incompetent or stupid. Even though I've become used to this kind of reaction after dealing with stuttering for the past 20 years of my life, I still felt incompetent and stupid for the rest of the time I was at the bench on that case. And even though I was well aware that I was the only person in the courtroom who knew every last detail the judge might need to know, I still couldn't shake the thought that constantly crept into my consciousness at times like these - what did it matter? I could have all the answers to all the questions in the entire world, but if I couldn't say them articulately, with poise and precision, then who would want to even listen to me at all?

My stutter had hijacked my mouth. The judge had asked me to speak but suddenly something was wresting control of my words, capturing them on the tip of my tongue, pushing the stale, stalled air against my tightly puckered lips, holding my verbal autonomy hostage in a vice-like grip around my throat, choking the life out of my ability to speak as I so choose, as if I had no right to say anything in the first place. My stutter then invaded my brain. Easily taking control of my previously logical thought pattern and replacing it with a perception of irrational, pervading panic that I would be stuck on this sentence, this word, this syllable, this god damn letter of the alphabet, for the rest of my life. My mind could no longer focus on the pertinent information I knew I was there to convey, but instead began spiraling out of control in a complex and vicious cycle of shame, guilt, humiliation and the complete and utter fear of being incapable, if only momentarily, of the most basic form of human communication.

And I use the word momentarily lightly. In reality, stuttering is much more than just a moment. For a person who stutters, that moment lives on in a paralyzing eternity. It develops a life of its own, showing up uninvited and doubling down in conjunction with the next stuttered word, and the next, building an arsenal of disfluency, the collective force of which is unleashed from then on at each and every new moment that becomes a stutter. It's a jarring reminder that overloads my senses until it seems like my stutter and I are lost in an endless labyrinth, chasing each other through the memories of my disjointed speech until I finally choose to follow this stubborn stutter that has somehow become my only way out.

So today, in that courtroom, I had two choices. I could escape into safe words as I'd done for years, hide behind syllables I already knew I could conquer, with the sad understanding that I will end up talking mostly in circles and lose my sense of self in sacrifice of not saying exactly what I wanted to say. Or, I could struggle through my stutter proudly. Risking secondary facial contortions, involuntary head jerks and eye movements, people looking at me like I'm lying or asking me if I'm having a seizure. But my words would be my own.

I chose the struggle. And I think from now on I'll keep choosing the struggle for the rest of my life. This past year has been eye opening for me to that fact. I went back to speech therapy on my own terms and found an amazing speech language pathologist who showed me, more than anyone could have ever told me, what being successful while stuttering looks like. I became active with the National Stuttering Association and Shared Voices, participating in support groups, attending meetings and conferences, and discovered a whole community of wonderful people who all speak just like me. I had a stamily I spent so many years without all because I was too afraid to admit it’s okay. It's okay to be different. It's okay to struggle. It's okay to stutter.

In honor of International Stuttering Awareness Day, I wanted to share this to try to convey the depth of a moment of stuttering, in whatever small way I can. How it's much more than just a repeated sound. How its lasting emotional and psychological effects don't just go away once the visible struggle has subsided. And how a particular stuttered moment is just one stuttered moment in a day of stuttered moments. In a week of stuttered moments. A month. A year. A life.

But I know our lives are made up of so many moments. We are all more than our struggles, more than the moments we would like to forget. Because the truth is, we have magical moments of laughter and love, too. Of adventure and surprise and sunlight. Moments of bravery and connection, insight and clarity. And I think that while we must acknowledge our struggles for what they are here to teach us, these other moments are the ones we build a life on. Collecting this kind of magic is more important to me than any word I would ever again be afraid to speak. And I'll tell anyone willing to listen that for the rest of my life, finding the moments of magic is what I'm here to do.