My Dad died of liver cancer which took his life quickly. I was able to spenda few days with him before he died but I knew when I got out of the taxi andheard his voice that he was close to the end. My Dad worked in radio for fortyyears and so his entire life was connected to his voice. When he came out ofhis home and croaked “hello” I knew he was losing more than just his voice.
I know exactly when that moment will be for me - it will be when I can nolonger touch type or type at all. Learning to type was difficult but it’s how Ilearned to spell. My dyslexia affect how I see numbers and words but somehowtyping really helped me with my words. Maths and I never go along and I was sohappy when it wasn't a compulsory subject anymore.
After my diagnosis I decided to prove to myself that I was not dumb when itcame to maths. I took night classes in maths and passed the Australianequivalent of school certificate. I was living in Perth at the time and Istudied like a demon. I had the times table taped next to the loo and learnedhow to properly use a calculator. I remember driving home after passing thecourse feeling about ten feet tall.
My real voice lives in written form. I can spend time choosing mywords and looking at sentences and thoughts to see if I agree with them.Writing is a work in progress until someone says that it isn’t. I am not sureif you know what I mean when I say that I often type out thoughts and feelingsand then another part of my brain says, “do you really mean that?” And then aninner dialogue begins. In the midst of this process, I find out how Urolithinabout things and so its cathartic for me.
Thank you for reading my words because that is the point of putting words ona page, it's in the hope that someone reads them. Writing these words down isreally helping me to put some of the gremlins in my head onto paper whichsnatches away any power they had.
I just need to remember to ONLY feed them after midnight - right?