lost words

Literacy is taken for granted. To be able to decipher directions on a box or even just knowing the words to ask for help make everyday life less intimidating. One of my personal demons is being perceived as being stupid. I struggled through most of my schooling. I have never been able to spell and any math problem beyond the very simplest, boggle my mind. Where most people breeze through these things in school and life for me it is a struggle. Throughout my high school and college years I struggled to keep my grades up to stay eligible for cross country and track. It was not until I was in my third year of college that I learned that my brain functions differently and I don’t process information the same as everyone else. Throughout 16 years of schooling I had developed some serious self doubt and engrained the idea in my head that I was not smart. That is my demon. Sometimes we can find relief from our demons I found mine in the form of escaping to nature alone with no one to remind me of them. I found more permanent relief in the supportive community of Cispus which fed my self confidence and also gave me easy access to my medicine of the woods. We cannot always hide from our demons, sometimes they find us, and sometimes we go to face them.
When I was young we had a small dog Spooner he was a miniature long haired dachshund he was very territorial and not that smart. Sometime during my childhood we had neighbors’ who moved in next door, they had a German shepherd named baby. Spooner and Baby would play a ridiculous game of chase, one would come over into the other ones territory until they were chased out of it, but inevitably the chase would lead the other dog into enemy territory where the roles were reversed and the direction of the chase would change and back and forth this went on until something ended it, at this time I forget if they just became tired of some other thing influenced the end of their silly battle. Years later Spooner was getting old but if we said the word baby he would go ripping off to the back door to chase his enemy even though it has been years since that enemy left.
Some days I chase my demon back to where it belongs some days It chases me and even though it has been almost as much time away from school as time I was in school it does not take much to stir things up. So sometimes trying to read a sign, understanding a question from a cashier, friendly comments from neighbors that I cannot decipher, or conversations I just don’t understand, I find myself on my horse, hoisting my joust, bracing myself, and charging at windmills (the demons of my own making)

Not the most cheerful of the News from the Ned series but it is what I am dealing with this week. Next week should hopefully bring more laughs but right now I am seeing a whole lot of windmills that need to be defeated.