Sometimes I am filled with such sadness, and for a very long time I didn’t know why. As I continue to delve into new parts of me, I am slowly getting it. I feel sad that stuttering has always had such a grip on me. There are things I haven’t done or tried because of the fear of how everybody else would see me, or better yet, hear me. I do not feel sorry for myself in any way, because this catharsis I am experiencing is very cleansing and powerful. It helps me understand so many things with such clarity. I now know why I didn’t hang out with some of the cool girls in high school, girls I really liked and wanted to find out more about. I knew I would not be able to communicate with them in their style, and I didn’t want to take the chance that they would titter about me in the lunchroom or in the Senior Lounge, where us seniors hung out. Instead, I contented myself with following their fashions, and getting everything the cool girls had. To this day, I still have a fetish with Aigner pocketbooks. I know I had to have driven my mother nuts, always coveting those expensive bags. And the same thing with the monogrammed sweaters. I had to have those too, just like the other girls. I knew I was already different because of my stuttering, so it was comforting to have the “things” that would somehow make me fit in. I never tried teaching, which I really would have liked to do, because I could never imagine myself up in front of a room full of kids, and stuttering. I think I missed out on something huge, because now, as I look back, I have the talents and gifts to have been a good teacher. I am patient, concerned about the listener, and can explain things really well. I know that a lot of that comes from years of practice explaining myself, or outing things into simpler terms. I used to always out things into simpler terms, because is was easier for me to say. In college, I played it safe most of the time as well. I found the quiet group, and did things that didn’t involve too much risk. I chose Social Work so I could help others, and figured much of the work would be one-on-one stuff, which of course would be easier. What I really wanted was to be the center of attention, just once, and have everybody point to me, and ooh and ahh, because I had the guts to be the leader, to try something first, to speak out. I always had good ideas, but felt like no one would want to hear them form the one who sometimes had trouble saying her own name. All of these things I am doing right now, I think, is my way of finding out if I can really do them. Being in Toastmasters and doing small-scale public speaking has been awesome already, and it’s only been about four months. I can stand up in a front of a room full of relative strangers, and speak, and get my message across just as well as everyone else. It has helped me enormously to just be upfront and mention that I am a Person Who Stutters. It takes the pressure off of me, and cues the listener to hear what I say, not how I say it. What I say is important, matters, and is pretty powerful stuff. My fellow toastmasters tell me I have a strong, clear, resonant voice. I wish I had known that years ago . . .