A pen of thorns: my dyslexic battle with handwriting

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A pen of thorns

Whenever I think about the difficulties I experienced with writing at school I am taken back to an image I used for a dyslexia project I did for my first dyslexia specialist qualification. Some of you may also remember it. It summed up dyslexia for me to a tee at that time. 

It was just a hand wearing an industrial glove and holding a pen covered in rose thorns. No non dyslexic will ever comprehend how the seemingly simple act of putting pen to paper can be so difficult and painful for dyslexics, on so many levels.

Going back to my secondary school days I can remember that I would look at others in my class writing neatly in joined up writing. All using their fountain pens in precise and delicate ballet like movements. 

They left no trail of ink or blots on the paper as their hands glided over the page with all the ease of a professional skater on the ice. Their writing flowed easily across the page like water flowing down river. Sentences and paragraphs all neat and tidy, their spelling all miraculously appeared across the pages.

I couldn't get it together at all. The fountain pen felt uncomfortable, like an alien object from some distant planet in my left hand. My writing didn't flow it stuttered like chalk screeching across a board. I had to drag it across the page like a heavy weight through mud. 

Whilst not quite as prickly as the pen in the picture it metaphorically might as well have been. No sooner had I put pen to paper there would be a mess of ink trailing behind my left hand. My hand would be covered in ink as I tried hard to engage in the act of writing on a piece of paper. In the end I used to write with my head hunched over my work and my right hand covering the top of the paper.

A pen of thorns

A few minutes after I put pen to paper my hand would start to ache and cramp up. I had to grasp the pen so tightly in an effort to keep some control over my hand writing all to no avail. Oh my head would be full of ideas of what I wanted to write but I just couldn't get them down on the paper.

Needless to say it took me ages to write anything. Then every time I handed in work a teacher would comment on my messy work. If I was lucky they wouldn't do it in front of the rest of the class.

Then there was my spelling to contend with. It was like trying to drive down a road full of pot holes. It seemed like every third word 

I would have to stop and contemplate how to spell something. Every five yards I drove down this road I would hit an pot hole then another pot hole and then another and another.

By the time I was 14 years old I have had enough of school, well the learning part of it anyway. So I stopped attending. 

Not altogether though I would go to art and music but for me the rest of school was irrelevant, boring, and painful even. I was able to express myself very well in art and music. No barriers there, my ideas flowed like mercury down a slide. I also enjoyed Religious Studies, not that I am religious in any way. But we used to discuss life and theories like ancient philosophers.  Exploring ideas in the spoken word was fun also.

It was a lot easier to skip school back then than it is now. I had lots of inventive ways of skipping school back then. The easiest one was to not wear a correct piece of the uniform. Just going into school without wearing a school tie was a good enough reason to be sent hope.

Years later in my first year at university I got feedback from a lecturer for a 2000 assignment I completed. I had spent many hours handwriting this assignment. Gawd only knows how many pieces of paper were screwed up and thrown in the bin before I had completed it. Every word was written in upper case because that’s the only way I can write legibly. I checked every word for spelling errors many times. It was like painting the Sistine Chapel for me. 

The first comment the lecturer wrote, in the dreaded red ink I might add, was,” doesn’t writing like this take a long time? How can you ever expect to pass any exam writing like this?”  His comment took the gloss off the fact I got an A- for the assignment.

I moved to a different university for my second year and it was here I was assessed as being dyslexic. It was then I was given access to disabled students allowance to buy a computer and assistive technology. 

It was then I started my journey of discovery of my dyslexia. More importantly I didn’t have to do any writing by hand. I was finally liberated from that pen of thorns by the digital marvel that was the computer and printer.

Many thanks for reading your comments and thoughts are welcomed.

#PeaceLoveGroovyness to you all.