Dear Anyone who will bother to read (part 1),

I want to preface this saying this is a vent. I've spent almost half my life keeping this story to myself, and at this point I don't feel like there's any way for me to bring it up naturally with people in my life. I'm not sure if I want them to know, but I know I want someone to. It's long, and thanks to the character limit, I'll have to separate it in more than one letter. It's your choice rather you want to read it all or not

Growing up, I had speech problems. It might have been caused by some teeth issues I had as a toddler, it might have been a symptom of an undiagnosed neurodivergence, the origin doesn't really matter in the great scheme of things. I remember having to repeat almost everything I said 3 times over before someone could understand it. I went to a speech therapist then and, although I can recall very little of it, it made things better, but didn't fully fix it

By the time I reached age 11, I still struggled with certain letters (My S sounded like a SH, my Z like G). And so, my parents decided to put me back in speech therapy with a brand new doctor. As a pre-teen I was terribly self conscious and quick to become ashamed. The whole thing, the environment, the exercises I was meant to do felt too childish. Like something I should have been long over, like I should have been better already, so when it came time for me to do the exercises every day, I usually simply wouldn't. The thought of my family listening to me doing weird noises with my mouth was too strong for me, but I also struggled to understand what the issue was within myself, and even more so to convey it to others. So, when asked, I simply claimed I forgot to do the exercises, time and time again

To be fully honest, I'm not sure if it was my refusal to cooperate that triggered all the bad stuff that happened. It's the only logical explanation I can find after thinking it over a thousand times over the years, but my memory of the order of the events that transpired in that room are messy. Maybe it always was like that, maybe I'm giving her too much credit to assume there was a logical reason behind it all, that there was some good intent behind her actions. Facts are: despite not doing the exercises I was meant to be doing, I kept going to that same speech therapist for about a year and a half, once every week, staying for about an hour. My father would always drive me there, but he'd wait either in the car or in the reception. The sessions were always one on one, just me and that woman. Since I can't recall the exact order of the events, I'll try to list them beginning from what was the most okay. These aren't all the things that happened, since there was something almost every week at one point, but they are the ones that stuck the most in my memory:

That woman would always try to engage in some level of conversation, and I could never tell if it was out of actual interest or if she was just analysing the way I spoke. She was pretty nitpicky. One day I mistook the word can for bottle when pointed at a picture of a soda can, and I can clearly remember how she acted as if it was absurd and kept acting weird for the rest of the session. Something similar happened when I struggled to tell for sure if a drawing of a hammer was indeed a hammer (I don't recall the picture that well, but I do remember the backside of that hammer seemed really weird to me, hence the confusion)

One time, in the middle of playing some game she set up for me that was meant to lead to me saying some words (she usually tried to begin with some sort of game, usually the type made for kids much younger than I was, which contributed to the whole shame aspect I talked about earlier) she told me to shut up for a minute, claiming my voice was too annoying

At some point, she began trying to understand me better, or at least that's what I think it was. Kinda psycho analysing me, I assume to try to get to the point where she could convince me to begin to do the exercises, but it went in some peculiar directions

She'd talk about how weird I was. She made me watch this movie, I can't recall its name off the top of my head, but it was about this father who raised several children completely isolated from society, consequentially making said kids completely lost when it comes the day where they have to step foot in the city. She told me I was just like those kids, despite having grown up in the city and going to school like everyone. I was too awkward, too socially inept, too weird. I had spent most of my short years being deathly aware of that fact and hating myself for struggling do much with it. Having an adult confirm those things to me had long lasting effects, but I'm getting ahead of myself (will have to continue in part 2, blame the character limit not me lol)