Seeing past the obstacles

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.  The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill

I've always considered myself to be a pessimist, a glass half empty kind of girl. After all if you think you're going to fail and you don't then you have a pleasant surprise. Hope to much that you'll succeed and the plunge to failure feels a lot further. But reading that quote has made me think. I've overcome many obstacles in my life to get where I am today and I'm sure that I'll hurdle a few more before my innings are up. The thing that struck me though is that though I complain and wonder if I'll ever get there or that I'll fail I never give up. It was a quality that probably did me a little too much harm to me than I should have let it when I was stressed and depressed. It brought me to cracking point and I only stopped when my body physically wouldn't let me keep going.

Whilst getting over my depression and stress is the most traumatic and probably the hardest of my obstacles I've tackled (and I'm still tackling) the longest obstacle I've had to face is without doubt my problems with maths. I sat through a lecture last year about learning difficulties and maths and was dumbstruck at the length of time it has taken those who work in the education sector to work out that people can have genuine difficulties with maths and don't just need to "try harder"¹. She commented on how it wasn't acceptable for people to admit they were bad at English or couldn't read, that nowadays people could have all sorts of tests and help to make sure that they did fall victim to dyslexia and illiteracy but it society thinks that it's absolutely fine for you to admit that you're not any good with numbers. She was of course making the point that it wasn't O.K. for people to be allowed to accept this and allowing them to was allowing our children to slip through the net and I quite agree.

I've had hundreds of people tell me that they're not any good at maths and I'm sure that a fair few of them were probably reasonably O.K. and that they just lacked confidence but I never doubted their sincerity. To me not being good at maths seemed like a fact of life. It's not simply a lack of confidence with me. I genuinely cannot grasp the concepts of math. I cannot even add simple numbers together like 7+3 and come up with an answer off the top of my head. I have to count on. Times Tables are a complete puzzle to me. I tried my best to learn them by rote but nothing stuck. I can do my 1, 5 and 10 times and that's what gets me by in life. And it's not just numbers. I struggle to read analogue clocks; I can't divide cake into equal slices; I don't know my left from my right half the time (driving lessons are fun!); map reading is lost on me as my sense of direction is pants (I get lost simply by walking inside a shop and coming out again); I struggle to read bus and train timetables.

It wasn't until a few years ago, once I'd persevered through primary school, secondary school, 6th form and 2 years of a university degree that I discovered that my difficulties had a name. I could be dyscalculic. In basic terms dyscalculia is the maths equivalent of being dyslexic. I've never been tested and I doubt I ever will be². Part of me would love to be tested simply so I had a piece of paper which I could flaunt in front of the eyes of all those people who told me to try harder and didn't believe that I wasn't any good at maths but at the same time I'm happy just to know in my heart of hearts that it wasn't all my fault that I was bad at maths it was just that my brain isn't mapped out that way and to be thankful that I have all these things that I can do and do so much better than those maths geeks I know who taunted me in school.

I've since joined a wonderful forum of like-minded people that have proved to me that no matter what obstacles life throws at you, you can overcome them if you choose to.

If you're reading this and thinking OMG that sounds like me then I suggest you try googling dyscalculia and see if it fits what you experience and if you want to join a forum I can highly recommend the dyscalculia forum they have members from all over the world and they can help you find information about help in your area.

1. I get so angry when people say I should just try harder. Sometimes no matter how hard you try things are impossible.
2. In the U.K. testing for learning difficulties normally takes place when a person is studying and as I am no longer in the education system I do not have that option