From the First Word

My mom always says that, as a baby, I never did anything until I decided it was time to do it. I army crawled around the house until I decided I was going to get up and walk. And I did. I refused my parents’ best efforts at potty training until, from one day to the next, I decided I was done with my diaper for good. And I was. I dismissed the idea of swimming until kids in my classes started having pool parties, and I couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on all of the fun. So I didn’t.

Even then, though, even when all I amounted to was two chubby cheeks and ten tiny little fingers, there was one thing I decided I simply could not wait to do: talk. While the average baby says their first word at 12 months, I said mine at 8. Though I will admit my word choice, “dada”, was anything but revolutionary, I often wonder if that first word was an easy one. Seamless. Effortless. Natural. I wonder if, in saying that seemingly simple and meaningless word, something changed within me, if, even then, I knew that words and the exhilarating feeling I got when I used them would define the way I lived my life from then on out. I wonder if the sound of my parents cheering and the feeling of them throwing me into the air excitedly stuck with me, if it flows through my blood and courses through my veins, being used as fuel for my desire and need to express myself. I wonder if this first word was a motif, a symbol of the passion I have for communication and a solidification of the love I have for using my voice in any means possible.

Sometimes, though, I can’t help but wonder if it was anything but. I wonder if I had to force that word from my tongue, tear it from my lips and hurl it from my chest the way I used to do growing up. I wonder if it had been resting in my brain long before my throat ever got the message to allow it passage to the outside world. I wonder if that first word was not a delicate and fragile articulation, but a defiant and resilient utterance which foreshadowed all of the challenges that would arise with speaking in the years to come.

I don’t remember when my stutter began, but I do remember the feeling of helplessness that soon set in and burrowed itself within me. As I got older, I remember looking back to that first word, realizing that no matter how much I had to say, I would never be heard the way I was at 8 months old; unlike before, speaking could be confining as much as it could be freeing. I remember feeling trapped, like I had no way out of my own head. Even now, I struggle to describe a stutter to someone who hasn’t experienced one; it was like my mind had finished a conversation that my mouth couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The words all rested right at the tip of my tongue, jumbled together, blocked by just one that couldn't seem to escape.

The hardest word for me was “the”. This was the most infuriating part, not being able to say the most common word in the English language, the one which started almost every sentence, which prefaced every story, introduced every thought. The word the was like a broken record skipping, an engine struggling to start. I struggled with the simplest of words, ones that were easy to get the rest of them all mixed up and frustrated; after the, I remember struggling the most with but and and. Looking back on that now, it’s like my brain was trying to silence me, trying to stop my sentences before they started or at least cut them off when they could. And it did.

At times, I would try to get it right again and again, the word repeating itself over and over until my mind had decided it was satisfied with the way it rolled off my tongue inelegantly. Others, I would drag the first syllable out, creating a rumbling sound which still hums in the background of my mind constantly, reminding me that at any moment it could resurface. Most times, though, as I got older, I would simply stop my sentence and wait for the conversation to pass. Even in the moments when my mouth seemed to forget its clumsiness, I would talk too quickly, too awkwardly, too excitedly. I would try to fit in as many words, as much of myself into those few seconds where my stutter escaped me, as I possibly could. I felt my stuttering to be an inconvenience, and even when I had the most interesting story, the most invigorating thought, my embarrassment and fear regarding my stutter simply took precedence over my elementary school excitements. It was like every time I opened my mouth I was pouring salt on an opened wound, ripping off a bandaid and exposing my weakness to everyone around me.

In truth, it wasn’t people’s words against me which hurt the most. It wasn’t the occasional “spit it out!” or “are you okay?” that silenced me; it was the chaos. It was that one day after school in 5th grade, the first day my classmates had grown weary of waiting for my words to catch up to them and how they spoke over my stutters instead of subsiding to them. It was the way that my words got lost in conversations, the way that I had finally gotten them to leap from my brain and through my throat and out of my mouth, but the moment had passed and the conversation had turned its back on me. It was the way that to me, these few sentences were everything, the way I was forced to pour every sliver of self and comfort and vulnerability into a limited number of words which no one seemed to hear. It was the way I was fighting a battle against myself, one which was seemingly impossible to be won. More than anything, though, it was the way I couldn’t be mad at anyone but myself, but my brain who moved too quickly and my mouth which stumbled too frequently.

I don’t remember much about speech therapy, either. I remember a kind, soft spoken woman who extended me crayons and brightly colored blocks as we spoke. I remember she explained to me that my stutter was a product of my being too smart, of my brain moving faster than my mouth could keep up with. I remember, even then, knowing that this was nothing more than a nicety. If my brain was so smart and was moving so fast, it could have worked out a way for my mouth to do its job. She told us it was normal, that plenty of kids struggled with a mild stutter in their formative years, but I remember envying the way that all of my classmates seemed to escape this reality. In truth, I don’t know how much speech therapy did except inform my parents and I that my stutter was not permanent, that all we could do was sit back and wait for it to pass, however long that would take. So we did.

Eventually, my stutter did pass. Luckily for me, it did not last very long into my middle school years, and the people who matter were patient as I grew out of that phase of my life. For a while, I tried to forget it happened entirely. From the outside looking in, my stutter was nothing to be dwelled upon, just a common habit which would be forgotten the moment the words found their way around and learned to flow gracefully off my tongue. Even now, though, remnants of my stutter remain caught in my throat and stuck in my brain. It comes back, sometimes, when I’m feeling stressed or insecure or even excited, and all over again I am that little girl with a lot to say and no means of saying it. I still talk too quickly, as if at any moment my brain will betray me and thrust me back into that time of my life, when my thoughts were not voiced and my words not promised.

Within the past couple of years, though, I have spent a lot of time thinking of the little girl who wanted nothing more but to speak and to be heard, to articulate and to be understood. Oftentimes, I find myself wondering if the girl I am today would exist without her. I wonder if, had I not come to know a life where expression was not a right but a privilege and a hardship, if I would understand how truly fundamental it is to who I am. I wonder if, had I never shunned speaking, if I would ever have picked up a pen and began to write.

Unlike most kids, my stutter allowed me to realize what I loved, what I craved, what I needed in order to be myself before I even came to know her: communication. Though, back then, the stories I told were merely tales of my weekend or thoughts on the school day which had passed, the ones I tell today are something more than just fleeting moments. I tell them in honor of that little girl, of the one who had more to say than her body could even handle and her mouth could even process. My stutter ultimately gifted me the two things which I believe define me and fulfill me more than anything else: my desire to express everything and anything, and my knowledge that everyone has a story whether we can hear it or not. Now, a decade later, I am chasing a dream founded in both of these things, one where I can write to my heart’s content and tell the stories of those whose mouths may not produce them but whose are essential nonetheless.

Though it has not been as easy as when I was an innocent toddler whose cheeks were still a naive shade of pink, I am still doing things exactly when and how I feel they should be done; I moved over 1,000 miles from home to chase a dying career in my dream city simply because I feel in my soul it is what I am meant to do. Despite many people trying to convince me otherwise, I have known since that very first word that this is what I was born to do: to use the words I have accumulated and the ones which remain stuck, to tell the stories of those who do not have the means to tell them themselves.

Though she once believed the world was out to silence her, the little girl who used to stutter in the schoolyards now knows that everyone has a story, each of which deserves to be celebrated and honored regardless of how clumsily they may be uttered. I owe it to the girl who found her purpose all those years ago to speak above the obstacles, to rearrange the words in a way that can be heard and understood and cherished. So, even when my voice shakes or stutters or stammers and every word gets jumbled or confused or clustered on the way, I will. For that little girl and all others who have yet to find their voice, I will.