One writer's journey from dyslexia to poetry

They laughed at my struggle to read, says Philip Schultz, but fighting back made me into a writer

For dyslexics, printed words can appears like a jumble of letters: But dyslexic poet Philip Schultz was determined to straighten them out.
(Image credit: Ikon Images/Corbis)

THIS MUCH IS clear: The mind of a dyslexic is different from the minds of other people. Learning that my problem with processing language wasn't stupidity seemed to take most of my life. Like every other important trade-off in life, giving up this negative image of myself has been complicated and difficult. I'd grown accustomed to seeing myself as someone who, if fallible and unworthy, had nevertheless managed to do one thing well enough to get recognition for it. I'd learned to accommodate and live around my compromised self in a somewhat comfortable and acceptable manner. Since I was 10, I'd taught myself to live a life of opposites — because I couldn't do this I learned to enjoy doing that, a compensatory way of swimming against constantly shifting currents. It worked well enough: I was happily married, had two terrific boys, a career as a writer, and a private school — which, I would soon come to understand, had been created out of the very thinking process I used to compensate for my dyslexia — all accomplishments of which I was very proud.

The act of translating what for me are the mysterious symbols of communication into actual comprehension has always been a hardship to me. I often read a sentence two or three times before I truly understand it; must restructure its syntax and sound out its syllables before I can begin to absorb its meaning and move on to the next sentence. And when I make the mistake of becoming aware that I am reading, and behaving in a way that enables this mysterious, electrically charged process to take place, my mind balks and goes blank and I become anxious and stop.

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