Dyscalculia a barrier to success?

I took my driving test yesterday.

I failed.

If coping with the failure wasn't difficult enough then dealing with the anger of being so close to pass was harder still. I had 6 minors, 6! That's hardly anything and they were just that, minors. The odd harsh break or fumbling for a gear. Nothing which could be considered to unsafe.

No the thing that caused me to fail was going up the kerb slightly whilst going forward to correct my reverse round a corner to the left. If i'd not gone up the kerb then my maneouver would have been fine, perhaps a minor for my positioning but that wouldn't have been a problem as even 7 minors is a good pass (you can have up to 15).

The most frustrating thing is that I know that no matter how many times I practice that maneouver it will never be good. You see I have dyscalculia. It's never been professionally diagnosed but my sister has dyslexia and they're closely linked. I never had the luxury of being tested in school, nobody had heard of the disorder, they were only just coming to terms with dyslexia.

Having dyscalculia means that I have trouble with mathematical concepts as well as other not so obvious mathemathical things. For example I find it hard to tell the time on an analogue clock. I cannot rotate things which made it very difficult to telll how far I was turning the steering wheel. I also find it difficult to know left from right so I spent a number of weeks with my instructor yelling directions at me and flinging his arms out to show me which direction I should go in. I struggle to judge distance too so i'm fearful when they ask me to pull up one car length away from the car in front or stay a metre away from the kerb.

I battle with it in my job too. I'm a teaching assistant so I spend at least 5 hours a week doing maths with the children. The majority of the time they will get the answer before I do which breaks my heart because they're 9 and i'm 23. I don't know many of my multiplication tables because unlike most children I was unable to learn they by rote. Instead i'm left with the leftovers of what I can remember either because it's simple addition e.g. 2x is the number added to itself or 10x because you just add a 0 on the end of the number.

I try so hard everyday to battle my disability, yes it is a disability. It doesn't stop me from doing things but it sure as help makes them tricky. If people knew how hard it was then they probably wouldn't taunt me as much as they do or make off hand remarks about it.

So i'm sat here this afternoon feeling very angry and frustrated because I know deep down that had it not been for the fact that I have trouble judging where my car is in relation to the kerb then I wouldn't have failed. Had my dyscalculia not clouded how I see things then I could be out this afternoon feeling the wind rush though my hair as I drive round the coast roads.

I don't want to put all the blame on my disorder but i've tried so many things to stop it getting in the way. I practised for hours on the end of the bed physically going through the maneouver, how many turns of the wheel, where to look, when to move, when to stop. I practised it in the car. We made marks in the car for me to look at and still I managed to get it wrong. What else left is there for me blame but the disorder.

But I don't want to. Blaming the disorder won't do me any good whatsoever. The disorder isn't going to make me pass the next test. I am.

I've got another test booked now. 4th October. That's over 2 months away now which is so frustrating as I'm ready now. What's really annoying is that it's also the date they include something new in the test. Something the dyscalculate part of my brain won't like. Independent Driving.

Independent driving involves spending 10 mins of the test following a list of several instructions the examiner has given you rather than one instruction at a time, or following roadsigns and markings to a particular place. Apparently the examiner can give you a diagram or map of the route too. This fills me with dread. Why? you might ask, isn't this just like the driving you'll be doing when you pass? Yes it is but not under test pressure and when I pass I intend to get a Sat Nav to help me with directions as i've already said I struggle with them and the roadsigns aren't as much help as they could be as the picture doesn't match what I see in reality in my opinion. So they idea that when I next take my test i'll have even more to contend with is not really making me feel better about failing this one.

I also have the problem of organising time off as it's not in the school holidays. They're quite picky about letting you have time out of the school day. Will have to try and twist their arms.

So there you have it Dyscalculia is so much more than a word, it's like a life sentence and people who deal with it everyday should be given a medal for bravery as you non-suffers have no idea the pain we go through just to survive the day.

Money money money

I've just been to the bathroom to vomit up half my lunch. It's not because it tasted awful or that i'm ill. No, it's because I feel like total shit. I checked my bank balance this morning. I had several hundred pounds in it which at first I thought was great. When Christmas came and I got money from parents I felt relieved thinking it would help enormously given my severe lack of cash. I decided to move it to my savings so I didn't spend it which left me with not very much cash. Most of my pay packet had gone on putting my account back into plus figures.

Then I checked my credit card statement. To my horror I'd forgotten to pay last months bill. So I had a late fee and interest on top of that added to what is already a ridiculous amount of money. Money which I can't pay off without using the savings. OH was trying to be supportive saying he'd help which didn't really help as all it's done is make me feel more guilty. I don't want him bailing me out all the time. I want to be on an equal footing with him. Instead I just feel like I live on handouts from him and other family. He says he knows how I feel. He's been spending more than he should recently too but what he doesn't understand is he has the money in his savings and deposits to cover odd blips. I have nothing. I cannot survive on what I have. I told him this and he said not to worry and that he would help.

I don't want help I want it not to be a problem in the first place. I've worked so damn hard all my life getting an education, being consciencious and hard working, all trying to please people and it just gets me nowhere. On Thursday I watched a co-worker teaching, or rather murdering the delivery of, a lesson of a subject which I have a degree in. I could so easily have done her job ten times better and I fought for the chance to do that last september and the head turned me down in preference to loads of other people including her. She only got hours doing that because she complained that he'd promised some and didn't give her any to start off with. He was supposedly giving these hours to people who had skills they could use to help the kids. I can't see how that's worked.

Ever since the bank thing this morning I've said hardly a word to OH. Mainly because I can't think what to. What do you say to someone when you know your whole world is crumbling down again. Especially when you know they'll try to tell you otherwise and tell you how good your life is when you've known for months that really all you've felt like doing is giving up, finding a very dark corner to crawl in to and hoping no one will notice you've gone so you can slip quietly away and don't have to think or worry about anything anymore. The frustrating part is the more I don't say anything the more desperate he becomes in trying to comfort me and get me to talk and then he goes and says or does something which makes me a feel a whole lot worse.

When i'd finished eating my lunch I didn't feel much like sitting there. Polite chit chat was not on the cards certainly. I can barely keep myself from crying how can I have a conversation? Especially without the tears becoming the topic of it! So I said thanks for the meal and pottered upstairs thinking about how if I could just make it to the top I could have 5 minutes peace to myself but then I could hear OH following and all hopes of that faded.

He asked to give me a hug. I just wanted to curl up and die from all the pain inside. I hate it when he asks that question. I desperately want someone to hold me and tell me it's alright but when they ask I can't bring myself to allow it. I don't deserve the relief it brings so I hold off for as long as I can. Almost like when someone asks if you want a slice of cake and you think it looks lovely and would love a big hunk of it but think it's inpolite to say yes can I have the really huge peice. So you say no thanks, really no i'm o.k until at least 3 or 4 people have had a slice and they ask if you're really sure you don't want some and then you say o.k you've twisted my arm. You let yourself have it because you don't feel as guilty now other people have been equally bad. So I climbed on the bed a made myself into a ball secretly hoping to erase the last few seconds and for him to not feel too regected. I know I hurt him. But then it came. The thing I fear most. When he speaks and I know i've hurt him because he retorts with something that I know will hurt me because I hurt him and I know it. "Fine ignore again like you've done all morning like you always do". The words went through my body like hot daggers and I lay there curled up for a moment feeling them pierce through my core thinking you're a bitch and you deserve this. It's all your fault. Then I sloped off to the bathroom with him muttering behind me "see you later". I stuck my fingers as far down my throat as I could get them making myself gag until I threw up part of my lunch. It felt like I was purging myself of some kind of poison, like somehow if I got rid of the meal I'd just enjoyed that somehow that would help me feel better that depriving myself of it would make up for how bad a person I am. It helped for all of 2 seconds. Now I feel just as bad.

Still Blue

It's christmas eve, a time when everyone should be feeling merry and excited about what's in store for them the next day. Meanwhile I'm still bluer that ever.

I can smell the turkey that's been cooked a day early. At first it made me feel christmassy but then I remember it's not christmas yet and I won't wake up to the smell of fresh turkey tomorrow instead it will be cold. They've also bought tinned carrots. I don't want to appear snobbish or ungrateful it just doesn't feel like a real christmas dinner to me. Everything my family have is fresh. I won't get to see my family in person tomorrow either, only via webcam and I doubt they'll be missing me too much. Probably far too caught up in spoiling my sister rotten as always.

I can't get off my mind how much money i've not got left in my bank account and the feeling it'll take me a long time to recover if I ever do. Slowly i'm loosing all of my savings. I say mine but really it's just money i've been gifted by people. I'm somehow incapable of saving money. It just drains out of my account like it's a sieve. It's not that I don't try to stop it or that i'm frivelous with it, it's just that finances aren't my strong point. I've never been good at maths and this kind of thing scares the shit out of me.

OH and I are supposed to be looking for a new abode, something i'd dearly love but I just know that it will be my finances that put a spanner in the works. He has loads saved I don't even have a 3 digit sum to my name at the moment.

Christmas Blues

I just checked my bank balance. I'm -£300 on my current account and my credit card lots equally grey. What's worse is my saving wouldn't even make a dint on it. It's not as if i'm in debt as such. Just more a lack of money at this moment in time. I've not been paid yet this month. I thought I would have been paid early given it being christmas but there's no sign of it yet.

It's not just the money that's getting me down though (although it's kind of the icing on the cake) it's just the season in itself. You can see by my previous post i've not been very cheery at the moment. I'd hoped it would have cleared a little by now given the festive season but then i'd forgotten how morose the holidays make me feel. Usually it doesn't kick in until Christmas is actually underway and almost over owing to the cramped surroundings I find myself in with family having taking over my room and me sleeping on a floor somewhere with nowhere to go and be alone and recollect myself. That's been a real problem in the last few years.

My Gran was involved in an RTA in 2001 and ever since then she's been declining in health her memory and mobility in particular. I've watched gradually as every little piece of the 'old' Gran has disappeared. The one that told me stories of her in the war, sang in choirs, visited people and knew everything there was to know about them, baked cakes, remembered where I was and what I was doing. Every Christmas since then it's gotten harder and harder for me to be around her. I feel like I can't even have a conversation with her anymore. I have to talk slower and louder because she can't hear (I know that's a common thing with older people), every 5 minutes she asks me questions which i've already told her the answer to 3 or 4 times and she doesn't remember i've told her the answer. She can't remember where i'm living, she thinks that i'm just visiting my OH and not living with him (one small blessing is she remembers who he is). She also can't remember that i'm no longer on my PGCE and training to be a teacher which breaks my heart as she used to be a teacher and was so pleased that I was going to be one. It also makes me low because I have to explain the agonising truth (that I got stressed/depressed) as to why I left every single time she asks.

My Gran went into a home about a month ago now. She wasn't feeding or washing herself properly and got sick and had two stints in hospital so this year Christmas will be very different for her and for us. My parents are having her over for Christmas dinner. I think they're picking her up Christmas eve and she's going home boxing day with my uncle, not that he's happy about it. Sometimes I think he just wants to get rid of her that he thinks she's a burden or maybe he expects more of her I don't know but it hurts when he says or does things that are negative.


My Christmas is going to be even more different than that this year. It will be my first Christmas not spent with my family. Instead OH and I are going to spend it with his family. I'm sure it will be nice but it won't be the same as mine. There won't be hot freshly cooked turkey for lunch (they cook it the day before); they give their presents out over christmas day, boxing day and new years day instead of just on christmas day which my family do (which is sort of nice as you spread the christmas out a bit). I probably won't go to church like I would do with my family and i'll have to wait till the 27th or possibly 28th to give out my gifts to my family.

All this has left me feeling lonely and out of sorts. It doesn't feel like Christmas at all. I'm not sure i'll even enjoy it. I just get the feeling that this year i'll just melt into the background with no one noticing i'm even here. My parents are supposed to be linking up the webcam on Christmas day so we can have a video chat but they'll probably forget. These days I feel like i'm not even on their list of priorities. I phone up and I can't even get a conversation out off them they're too busy talking to people in the room with them, usually my sister who is obviously their favourite. I find out that they've been places or done things that I would have loved to have done had they thought to invite me but they don't.

I think i'm just going to have to grit my teeth, put on my false smile and pretend as usual that everything is o.k with me and hopefully no one will notice that my world is slowly falling apart again and that barring some miracle i'll have committed suicide by next Christmas.

Back to Black

Feeling totally shit today. OH is away on a training course in London till Thursday night so i'm on my own.

I'm alone and I'm really feeling it. I know that he'll be back in a few days but I doubt the feeling will disappear. It's not just a feeling of being on my own momentarily, it's a lifetime of lonleness. It's been there for a long long time way before I was with the OH. It's the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I watch normal people happy and smiley and chattering away to each other, like a lunchtimes, while I sit there in silence having tried to join in and make them smile like others do and all I seem to get in conversation is niceties. "How are you?" "Fine, you?" "fine" *silence*. It's the feeling I get when the OH's father shouts at me for opening the dishwasher door when it was on accidently. It's the fear that whatever I say or do will somehow be ridiculed or won't be good enough. The knowing that somehow i'm not meant to be happy, that my life is meant to be full of gloom. The certainty that when I want someone to notice how down I am and that I need a hug, to just be held and them not care or need to know why will never happen. For example this evening my dad texted to say my gran's phone is now up and working at her rest home. I texted back saying o.k i'll try and ring her tomorrow and asked him how he was. Then said that my tooth was aching again (I had bad toothache a few weeks back which turned out to be an infection and it needs to come out but as i'm woosy I need to be sedated which needs the proper person so I have to wait). I'd hoped that he'd text back with some sympathy. All I actually got was "O.k. - off to the gym tonight". Nan rang too but she hung up pretty quick as she said I was listening. What was actually happening was I was trying my hardest not to cry so she wouldn't ask why.

That's where the other feeling comes in it's the knowledge that when I'd rather just slip into the dark ether and not be noticed everyone wants to know what's wrong and why i'm so upset. Which is the real grind because the words "i'm depressed" or "everything" don't cut it. Somehow you're not allowed to feel so earth shatteringly down that nothing feels good. "I'm depressed" seems to be code for oh dear we're feeling a little hormonal today or feeling a little sad. If only. I spent years trying to convince my parents that I was depressed. I'm absolutely sure that teenage girls do not cry themselves to sleep nearly every night or dream of ways they can kill themselves because they didn't get an answer right in maths that day. They don't break down in tears when a family friend's daughther and parents talk to their family about how said daughter is having counselling for their depression. How many times did I have to pleed with them that I was depressed before they would acknowledge it. The answer is I still am. Even after i'd had my breakdown in 2008 my mother still refused/refuses to believe that I was depressed as a teenager. I know for a fact that I was. I know I still am now even if they think i'm not.

Today I have no idea why I am depressed. Just that I am and it feels like nothing will cure it. Some may say it's because of my tooth. It may well be but I somehow don't think that is the sum total of the reasons.

I quite often wonder what the point of me being on this earth is because quite obviously I am just a burden to it's fellow occupants. I feel like I don't deserve to be alive. The hardest thing is keeping up the pretense to everyone else that i'm o.k. so they won't worry. What do you tell your nearest and dearest when they ask you if you're o.k or even worse are you happy? How the hell am I meant to answer that? How can you tell the people you love that there are some days where no matter how many people you have surrounding you, you feel completely alone or that some days you wish that you weren't here anymore. That happiness is just a fleeting glint or that you're both not happy and happy at the same time because if you say you're not then they assume you don't like or love them anymore and there is some great crisis or they're causing your pain but if you say you're happy then they can either quite obviously see you're not or they just tell you to stop sulking and snap out of the mood then. I desperately want to rid myself of this horrible black dog but I just don't know how. I'd go back to the doctor but I just get the feeling that they'd put me on drugs which I know won't work and I don't want to be on them. The counselling didn't work I just felt ridiculed and belittled by them like I was some silly little girl. I'm worried too if I go back to the doctor that somehow i'll be forced to tell work and that'll be my career over before it's even had chance to get started and that after failing the PGCE that'll be another job I can't do that came close to what I wanted to do. I just feel like what's the point in trying anymore. It's gotten me very little good stuff and mostly heartache.

My comment on today's postsecrets

This week's postsecrets were dedicated to college and university leavers. Frank had been to a graduation ceremony somewhere in the US and given a speech. He's opened the commenting feature on the blog for one week only so that people can write their own pearls of wisdom to graduates. Here is my offering:


It's okay to fail. Sometimes your failures can be your biggest successes.

I failed my PGCE (teaching degree in u.k) last year due to stress and depression. When I look back now at the failures I had I can see that they only really made me stronger and more determined to suceed at what mattered. Since then I've got a job working as a teaching assistant, I've moved half way across the country to be with the person I loved most in the world and who supported me through all of it... and last month he proposed! What's more I'm happier than i've ever been.

Failing made me realise that succeeding is not always reaching the goal you set out for.

Almost a Vicar but not

Oops I'm not doing very well with my one blog a day. I've missed a few days mostly because I've been so busy. Every night I've been coming home from work feeling so exhausted it's hard to muster the strength to turn the laptop on let alone write my blog. I blame the early starts and not being in a routine yet. I'm hoping once I am it won't be so bad and I'll be able to blog a bit more. I have realised though that this will officially be my 39th entry of the 40 blogs to make a habit. Which means that the next blog I write will be the final blog post out of 40 compulsory ones I set myself.

I didn't write anything the last few nights because I was down at my parents. Or rather up given they live further north than I do! My mum was being invested as a lay reader on Saturday. For those who don't know what one is they're as close to being a vicar without actually being one! Consequently this meant a lot of travelling (OH drove and I backseat drove!) and little access to Internet and computing equipment. It was a good weekend. We had all the family there which was nice but also quite tiring especially looking after my Gran who seems to have deteriorated even further than when I last saw her. I miss my family when I'm not with them but when I am they ain't half hard work. Families can't live with 'em and you can't live without 'em!