The first time the word “dyslexia” resonated with me was at university in 2013. At the time, I was barely 30 years old and I was starting to resume studies in psychology. One day, the university health service mentioned this cognitive disorder during an integration day. I suddenly recognize myself, to my great surprise, in the difficulties mentioned: repeated spelling mistakes, slowness and lack of automaticity in reading and writing, fatigue, memory problems, etc.
The speech therapy assessment carried out in the process is unequivocal, despite the rather “light” nature of my disorders compared to others: here I am diagnosed, late, “dyslexic” for reading, and “dysorthographic” for writing. It is an indescribable relief. “I wasn’t dumb and stupid! I was dyslexic! There was a reason for all these difficulties in my youth! » I thought immediately. In front of the neuropsychologist who announces this to me, my chaotic schooling is rewritten and takes on another color.
Born in the 1980s at a time not so long ago when we did not yet speak of “language and speech disorders”, even less of “dys”, my difficulties appeared as soon as I learned to read and writing in elementary school. Obviously, I learned more slowly than the others – ” nothing serious “, said the teachers. But the recurrent spelling mistakes, the inversions of letters in the words (the “b” and the “t” in particular) and my permanent slowness continued in college, to the great displeasure of my mother who was exhausted trying to make me do dictations to improve my level. I couldn’t concentrate. I can see myself spending hours daydreaming on the living room table, in front of my notebooks, and she regularly calls me to order. I was the dunce cap of the family and the class.
I progressed as best I could until high school, floating just above 10 in the general average despite my efforts. Also, despite the speech therapy courses that I had begun to follow under the advice of my French teacher from 5e. Was the term “dyslexia” then used? I do not remember.
My confidence was disappearing
After repeating my second, I headed for a technology series, despite my teachers’ insistence that I “specializes” in the professional path. In question, once again, these writing errors with which my copies were stuffed, and my slowness to read and write, therefore to learn. However, like many dyslexics, I provided a lot of work to overcome my difficulties, which tired me enormously. A thirty-minute exercise took an hour and a half at my house. I couldn’t finish my assessments. I was working like crazy but getting mediocre results. I memorized everything so badly. I could see that my brain was not as “efficient” as that of my comrades… I had a lump in my stomach to go to high school. I hated Sunday nights. Confidence in me was gradually disappearing, like my desire to continue a school course that was decidedly not made for people like me. After failing my baccalaureate, I decided to take my backpack and go to England to work, and rebuild myself a little, for two years, far from the pangs of schooling.
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