In the Eye: Interview Part 1

I decided to interview my little sister about stuttering, thinking I would get a couple of good quotes to share. However, after recording and then transcribing her answers, I was forced to edit and cut until I felt like only fragments remained... and yet... there were still three pages of 12-point text left standing. So, here is Part 1 of many more to follow:

My precious sister and her precious sugar

Me: When was the first time your stuttering became noticeable? How old were you?

Isabel: I started stuttering when I was three years old.

Me: How have your peers reacted to your stutter over the years?

Isabel: Often people will finish my sentences, just ‘cuz that’s an automatic thing to do. A hard thing when I'm speaking with my friends or people at school is that they won’t look me in the eye and I hate that. Because I hate thinking that I'm making people feel uncomfortable. Because it’s not like I can do anything about it.

What made me especially sad is when I went to the stuttering conference and when people stuttered it made me feel uncomfortable and I was like, "if I feel that way, what are other people feeling? I am a stutterer and it even makes me feel uncomfortable!" It blew my mind. It was worse than I ever dreamed of it being, being on the other side of it. I’d never had that experience before.

I think that whenever I'm introduced in any new situation, people have a hard time adapting to it. It was fun, in a sad way, to ask my friends what they thought on my very first day [of middle school], when they heard me talk for the first time… I had answers like “I thought that you were making fun of the teacher” or “I thought that you were having a seizure” or many varied answers that just cracked me up because of how sad it was honestly.

I was nervous about introducing myself for the first time at [school]. I have a hard time with saying my name, as everyone who stutters does. I bet half the world thinks my name is Belle now because that's just the first thing that comes out. And you know what? So my name’s Belle. I don’t like having to change it. That’s not my name. But it’s my name to them now because I couldn’t say it.

Whenever we would play those icebreaker games, where you would all sit in a circle, and then the teacher would come around, they were terrible. Because every single time it would come down to me I thought “I'm gonna throw up!” Like one of those horrifying 3-2-1 countdowns when you're on a rollercoaster. And every single time everyone would stop and stare at me! And I was thinking “nothing’s going to come out, you're just going to have to deal with it.” And that was hard. 

And I hate reading out loud books in class. I hate when I get the long parts. When I'm reading out loud, it’s really bad. I try doing things like tapping my foot and that can work some days, but some days it doesn’t. And presentations are hard. Especially since some days I don’t stutter one time and sometimes I can’t even speak. It’s like I'm a mute person. There's nothing coming out. Or I stutter on every single word. When I stutter more than usual, people always look at me ‘cuz they’re not used to it. Then I get more stressed out because I know that they’ve noticed that I'm stuttering more and I keep stuttering and then I think “this is never going to come out.”

When we’re in big groups it’s hard because these days all teenagers are just so fast. Even the kids who can say the things they want to say have a hard time getting a word in. And then here’s me and I think of something really funny and then it’s passed, you know? If I said it, it wouldn’t even have to do with the conversation at all.

Me: How does the general public tend to react to your stutter?

Isabel: Often they’ll look away from me because I think that when kids are little and they see someone that isn’t like everyone else, that’s disabled at all, always their parents tell them “don’t stare; don’t stare because it’s rude.” So I think that’s one of the reasons why when I stutter, people just look away automatically- like, everyone that I’ve ever met. They don’t even look at me.

Sometimes the general public is mean. I’ve experienced so many times when people ask “did you forget your name?” I hate that one. They think they’re just joking about it… saying things like that, making a joke, or mimicking.

I don’t like to call stuttering a disability, but I’m going to do it here. I don’t find it fair that stuttering is a disability that people find is socially acceptable to joke about. That stupid Porky Pig in those cartoons! Every single time I hear the audience laugh, I’m like “shut up!” You know? Would they have a person with [another type of disability] up on the screen and have them laugh at them? No, no one would ever do that because it’s considered rude. And horrible actually. But it’s happening with stuttering and it makes it so that when I go out into the public people are laughing at me and it’s a joke. That doesn’t seem fair.