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But, as I prepare for the next chapter of my life, it has never been more important to stand out from the crowd. I was too ashamed and afraid of judgment.
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![my secret identity band my secret identity band](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2_WItqU4AEclez.jpg)
I never wanted my learning disability to become a part of my identity. Many struggle in some way to accept a part of who they are, whether it’s disability, mental illness, or sexuality. However, I still kept my secret hidden from my classmates under heaps of hard work I did behind the scenes. I even convinced my teachers to let me take an honors class as a freshman. I seized the opportunity to succeed on my own. No way could I face the humiliation! The beauty of becoming a high schooler was that Special Education did not make assumptions and place me in lower level classes. I kept my condition top-secret by laying low throughout elementary and middle school. It’s safe to say I have changed significantly. If I couldn’t avoid special education, how was I going to stop my classmates from wondering where I went everyday or worse, prevent them from coming to the conclusion there was something wrong with me? The only thing that seemed to be within my reach was to never let on or tell anyone I had dyslexia. I pleaded with my parents and teachers, but it was no use. I wanted to believe I was no different from my peers, but I knew why I had to leave. Soon I began to leave class regularly to learn the fundamentals that seemed to come so quickly to everyone else. Just weeks before, I had been escorted out of my classroom for the first time to be tested for dyslexia. The embarrassment I felt was unnerving as heads turned to watch my special educator lead me out of class. Choking my tears back, I looked up to find her in the doorway. As I sat with fearful anticipation, tears flooded my eyes, blurring my vision until Clifford the big red dog became a big red smudge. To my seven year-old self, nothing was more foreboding than this “silent reading time”. All the while I kept my head down, focused on the words, and paced myself to the rhythm of page turning set by my classmates, who could actually read, in case anyone was watching. I restlessly skimmed the pictures in a Clifford the Big Red Dog book, typical of me during independent reading.
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I just wish we had met on the first night of my stay, instead of my last.“It’s okay! Just breathe!” I said to myself in an attempt to suppress my unfaltering anxiety. It was absolutely liberating to be able to open up to someone, and not only have the person listen, but genuinely empathize. It was just so nice to connect to a real person with shared experiences. We shared our stories, feelings, revelations, and a bunch of non-DB stuff, too. We ended up having an enlightening, 3-hour conversation about our respective situations. She admitted that she subscribed to deadbedrooms as well, and that she was also an HL. It was then that I realized that she had seen what I was reading on my phone. (Yes, I just verbed that.) When out of the blue, I hear a woman's voice behind me ask "Excuse me, can I ask you a personal question?" Intrigued, I said she could, and she asked "Are you an HL or an LL?" I stared, puzzled for a moment, mostly because I knew what the initials meant. I was having dinner in the hotel restaurant, with a whole booth to myself and my phone propped up in front of me so I could Reddit while I eat. So I was out of town on business all last week, staying in a city hundreds of miles from my DB, so I was utterly on my own.