I remember standing in friend groups while everybody talked. I wanted to say so much. Sometimes I wanted to make the same joke somebody else made thirty seconds later, but I couldn't, or I wouldn't dare.
That was lonely. I was there with my friends, and there was all this stuff I wanted to say that stayed inside me.
The pain people did not see
My mom and dad didn't know that pain. My sister didn't know it. The feeling in my stomach after being humiliated again at school. The tears when I was going to bed. I wanted someone to help me unpack what I was going through.
Living with it day after day, for years, was a silent life struggle. For me, the loneliness was one of the hardest parts.
I would have loved a big brother who understood
I would have loved a big brother who had gone through it. Someone who could help me with my fluency and understand how lonely the experience could be. Both mattered to me.
I wanted a thought, a joke, something about my day to make it into the conversation. Later, being able to say more became a big part of the life I wanted with better speech.
That is behind what I said about sharing good and bad speaking experiences with someone close. I know what it is like to have people around you and still have so much going on inside that they don't hear.
I can't go back and help myself when I was struggling. What I can do now is share the help and encouragement I would have wanted.
What I said helped me beyond fluency
I said that what really healed me went beyond fluency. It was learning to talk to people more and sharing my life with somebody who cared enough to sit down with me or be on the phone.
It could be a clerk at a grocery store. But I also talked about being friends with them and having coffee outside. It's the relationship. Asking how something went since the last time we spoke. Having somebody ask questions about your life. I said there was such joy in that.
I had wanted someone to help me unpack my thoughts. All those failures lived in my head, and I didn't have another human being to do that with. Having that kind of conversation mattered to me.
I also said the fluency helped me do more of this. Returning to places and people and talking with someone close belong in that part of the story too.