From struggle to liberation, embracing my dyslexia and finding freedom in writing

There I was, young and confused, wondering why am I here, why me, what is wrong with me. I could do everything that the other kids could do – run, jump, laugh, cry. But somehow, for some reason, reading was a challenge. I found myself filled with shame, doubt, and a little fear because I realized I wasn't the same as everyone else. I was falling behind, struggling to keep up, to understand, and to do well in class. It was 1998, and I was diagnosed with a learning disability.

My struggles over shame and struggle having dyslexia

Later in life, I learned that I have dyslexia, along with auditory processing disorder and now an eye stigma. Because of all this and the shame it brought me back in the day, I had never tried to read a book. I'm someone who always struggles to read. I never could quite understand why someone would want to read subtitles on a TV show or movie – the character was saying it anyway, and the words were all too small and blurry to make out. Then I realized that wasn't normal for everyone else. For me, even when I got tired, letters would begin to blur and merge into one. "It's hopeless to try to read," I thought to myself. "I will get by just fine." After a few years went by, somehow, I scraped by in high school and got into university. So now I was fucked, Here I had to learn how to research, and write formal essays, and read boring heavily academic books. I'm fucked!

Graduating thanks to spell check

But somehow, I passed – God knows how. I nearly killed every single computer I wrote essays on with the amount of spell-checking and grammar corrections I required. I could hear the computers realizing it was me every single time I turned them on and logged in. They would groan and creak, as if to say, "Why me? Why him!" Along with the help of those poor, tired computers and their processors, I also got help from over 5+ people who would read my horrible essays and rewrite and spellcheck them. To give you a little taste, I never knew that 'who,' 'how,' 'their,' and 'there' meant different things at the time. In short, I cheated to pass university. God, I wish I had AI when I was in my late 20s in the 2010s. Even though I was graduating, I had yet to read a proper book for myself, let alone write anything beyond academic drivel.

From corporate blues to creative release

It wasn't until I got my first job, wearing a suit and button-down shirt for three years straight, that I started to hate corporate life. So I picked up a camera to kill the monotony. After a little bit of flirting with photography, somehow, I don't know when, I started carrying a notebook around, drawing fonts for fun. I know, someone who doesn't read or write liked drawing the symbols that make up the very language I could barely read, write, let alone see with my dyslexia. It wasn't until 2015 that I started writing my thoughts down. At the same time, I started writing a blog. I thought, what's the harm? No one was going to read this; I could barely read it myself. The spelling and grammar were like trying to decipher a puzzle from the Zodiac Killer to even understand it. But I started writing, carelessly and free of judgment. No one would even read it, let alone see it, I thought to myself.

Three readers or bots and my keyboard

Then 9 years had passed, and I'm still writing on my blog, with only a maximum of 3 readers throughout the years I was typing away. I tried to post every Monday, with the occasional miss throughout the years. But I still wrote, I still kept it up, for no one else but myself. It wasn't until 2023 that I started to actively learn how to write and structure an online essay. But I didn't care too much. But for some reason, with only three bots scraping and reading my website, I found it freeing. Sure, it was a struggle to type, to construct sentences, let alone paragraphs, but here I was writing and having fun. I was putting down and archiving my thoughts, my ideas, and my beliefs at the time. It was a form of therapy, and it was just for me, even though anyone had access to read it. I felt like a clever spy, hiding all my secrets in plain sight for all to see, if only they looked.

Pen, paper, and the art of reinvention

It was in 2015 that I vowed to always keep a pen and notebook on me. I have a collection of around 16 notebooks and a few larger journals from throughout the years. But it truly helped me; it helped me reflect on what was going on in my head. It helped me look over my goals, what I wanted and wanted to be. Because of all this, I quit my corporate job, became a full-time photographer – you know, the hobby I dabbled in to stop the monotony of cubicle life. And I still write today. Am I going to become a world-class writer? Probably not. And that's OK because these words I'm writing are just for me. You might be reading them; you might even understand and relate to how I'm feeling. But I write for me, myself, and I. If you can relate to writing as I do, then you too also know the feeling that comes from writing your thoughts, ideas, wishes, goals, beliefs, and aspirations down on paper.

Pages of redemption

You understand that writing can save a life; it guided me to become the person I am today. Words help me cope with my dyslexia and start reading books, philosophy, history, and learn from a time past. The symbols I used to draw for fun, I began to understand; I could put them together slowly and form words and sentences that taught me new ways of seeing the world. I got insights from people who had passed long ago, but their souls were captured in the pages they wrote. Books became my history teacher; books became my mentor; writing became my psychiatrist and friend to whom I could tell everything without fear of judgment. These little letters became my friends, forming together to give me hope, my saviours. Because without them, I wouldn't be here; I wouldn't be the man I am today. I'd be depressed in a corporate cubicle, stuck in an echo chamber form of the rat race.

Writing as a lifeline

Writing freed me; writing led me to books; writing helped me think and process my ideas and aspirations. Writing became my default way of thinking, of communicating. Sure, I wasn't in any danger or life struggle; I'm a man in a first-world country, privileged to even have the time to think of existential thoughts and ideas. But I assure you, without writing, I would be face-first in a dark mirror, stuck in a zombie state, working paycheck to paycheck without knowing about the wonders a new book could bring – the smell of the pages being turned, the feeling of a fountain pen gliding across the page as you write. I would never understand the struggle and contemplations of Lao Tzu, Marcus Aurelius, or even the writing of Paulo Coelho, to name a few. It's not an exaggeration when I say this because it shaped me, changed me, and rescued me from a life of monotony. Writing saved my life.