Living in Reality

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by Castadiva13
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Hello Everyone,

Today I wanted to talk about the reality of living with an LD. As I've said before I've faced my share of hard times in the academic realm. I went through years thinking that after school things would be better, I could be "normal". I knew, in my heart, that this was not the case, but knowing things and facing them are completely different. I've been studying Opera for 3 1/2 yrs now and love every minute of it. However, there is a similar pattern in terms of how I am able to learn the technique. I always figured it was just muscle memory, whether or not I could have the proper pelvic tilt or right lung expantion etc. My instructor sometimes gets impatient with me and often expresses his frustration with my lack of consistency through an outburst of some kind (nothing over the top but it's clear he's frustrated). Anyways, I've been wondering for a while now whether my body technique had something to do with my learning difference. Well I guess the powers that be heard my question because who called me? My LD tester and friend. Even though I'm no longer in school I still get tested in case I lose my mind and go to Grad school. We were discussing how each other was and what was new in our lives, then we proceeded to discuss a time when I could go in and get tested again etc. I seized this opportunity and spoke to her regarding my concerns about my Opera technique and my LD. She told me that the brain processes the way the body moves (of course!) and that my Opera would be affected by my LD pelvic tilt and all. The process of learning, and understanding, no matter what I do will always be much more difficult for me. There is always a difference between knowing something intuitively and hearing it out loud. After hanging up the phone I cried, it always feels like such a fight. I always considered myself a simple person, I just want to be happy. By having a disability it many times feels like I have to fight for that happiness, and I am fairly tired of it. I know that feeling that way doesn't help and that I need to just be patient and keep pushing myself to learn and grow and eventually I'll get the hang of the Opera technique. People may think that over time this goes away, believe me it doesn't. Certain aspects become easier to compensate for, however, it never goes away. There are new things that come up everyday in life that I have to relearn how to compensate for. Opera is the biggie. It really is just so difficult to grasp the reality of it 100% of the time, and what I thought would come much easier to me doesn't. There will never be anything I do that does not take much more work and effort than someone else who doesn't have this disibility.