To Live With a Stutter/What it is like to Stutter

If you're looking at the title of this post and saying "huh?" don't worry. I did the same thing when I came to that assignment in my English book! It told me to write an interior monologue, but I had never heard of one before!
Anyway, I decided to do my paper on stuttering from the perspective of the stutterer. After all, since I myeslf was a stutterer, I should know what it was like!


To Live with a Stutter
If only I could talk like everybody else does! If only I could sound normal at least once in my life! I am tired of the forced smiles, the awkward nods as responses, and the silly laughs and imitations that come from other people. I am tired of the breathlessness, the tight chest muscles, and the hot flushed faces that come every time I attempt speech.
It really was a lot of fun at the picnic last Saturday, except for when I tried to ask Jacob Mayer how their new baby was. Tight throat, eyes blinking furiously as if I had lived on nothing but caffeine since I was three, words being forced out of the back of my throat and stammering terribly on every syllable. Jacob had given me a weird look and, grinning as if I had just told a joke, had asked me with a deliberate stammer why I talked like that. I had pretended I didn’t care about being teased. After all, he and his brothers were more like brothers to me, and my brothers teased me too, but never about the inability to talk. I had replied as cheerfully as I could that I simply couldn’t help it. Giving me another weird look, he remarked that I always said that, and then ran off to play ball with the other boys.
Mr. Harmon told a really great joke in Chemistry class today. I couldn’t quit laughing about it and I wanted to tell it to David and Mom, but jokes are always a problem. The punch line is always great and goes smoothly every time, but getting up to it poses a huge problem. Once again, my face turns burning red, I struggle to breathe, every muscle in my chest is tight and I feel as though I’m about to burst open. Finally, I get to the punch line. But by that time, something has happened in both the other person and in me, and the joke is no longer funny. Pain and sympathy register in the other person’s eyes and tears well up in mine. The other person manages to recall the joke and laugh at it in an attempt to make me feel better and erase the awfulness of the last few seconds, but it does little good. As I inhale deeply to catch my breath and release the immense amount of tension built up in my chest, neck, throat and face, I choke down a sob. “All I want in the world is to be able to talk like other people! My sister doesn’t like talking to people, why couldn’t she be the one with the stutter while I, who love conversation, speak straight?”
David and I were trying to imitate Pat Brady from the Roy Rogers movies at supper today. I was making funny faces and talking in a somewhat abnormal voice. Whenever I speak in a funny voice, usually much higher than my own, I am, for once, guaranteed fluent speech. After the meal was over, the younger four went into the family room to play, and we soon began hearing a reenactment of the last cowboy film we had seen. Jonathan opened the door and I, hearing the last line spoken, thought of something to follow it up with. I opened my mouth to say “Jonathan”, but something in the back of my throat blocked any sound that might have come. I sat there straining with my mouth hanging open like a dead fish as Jonathan sprinted past me and down the hall to his room. He had no idea I was trying to talk to him.
I worry that I might never get married if I can’t get over this mountain of a problem. I know I’m only 15, but it doesn’t seem too early to start thinking about it, and as I get older, my stutter gets worse, not better. I stutter the worst when I’m talking about something serious, and if I’m ever going to know get to know the guy I’m going to marry, we’ll have to have some serious talks. But who wants to marry a girl who only speaks fluently when she’s being silly? I may as well get used to the fact that I might never get married. But I want to get married! I always take it for granted that I won’t stutter when I grow up, but I don’t know how I’m going to overcome it. I’ve tried for years to overcome it and nothing has worked. I tried adding “um”, “uh”, “and”, or “yeah” onto the beginnings of all my sentences because I didn’t stutter on those words, and if I could get off to a good start at the beginning of a sentence, I was good for the rest of the way. But now I’ve grown so used to saying those little words that I stammer worse on them than I do on the rest of the sentence. I wish like anything that I could just start a sentence with the first word, rather than having to use some other introductory word. It’s been forever since I have been able to do that; I don’t know how long it’s been, and I don’t remember what it’s like. I decided to try it once and see what would happen. We won’t talk about that. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t successful by any stretch of the imagination.
A year or so ago, if I wasn’t thinking about stuttering before I said something, I would be just fine and I wouldn’t stutter. Now, I live in constant fear of stuttering, not just on every word I say, but on every syllable. I often think of something I want to tell Leah at church, and I’ll think about it and practice saying it for a week or so in advance, hoping against hope that it just might go smoothly for once in my life. I am usually disappointed.
Too often, stuttering will become too much for me to bear. I tried to say something to Mom the other day, and begin stammering worse than usual. Every syllable of every word was torture, my face was so hot and I was so tense inside! Suddenly, something inside of me snapped and I let out my breath almost violently. In what was nearly a yell, I exclaimed that I would never stop stuttering and that I was going to give up. Somehow, I never stutter when I am angry. Can I never talk like other people? I often think about and wonder what it would be like to talk without the fear of stuttering. It was a fairytale-like dream. To be able to speak normally. To be able to communicate clearly. To say what I want to say without having to change thoughts, words, or give up altogether. It was wonderful as a dream. It was impossible as a reality.