I hate tomatoes. The pungent, sour flavor, along with the revolting, mushy texture dominate my tongue in any meal that I have them in. I am keen to take tomatoes off of my order when ordering food from a restaurant’s mobile app or website. If a given restaurant does not have an option to deselect tomatoes, I leave a comment where it is provided for me, telling them that if there is a tomato on my burger, I will be asking for a new one. This confident display of candor travels only through written-word, however, as if I were unfortunate enough to be in a situation where I was forced to verbalize my order to a waiter, I would relay only the bare minimum amount of words to receive the meal. The verbal addition of “no tomato” is just added embarrassment and demoralization, so I prefer facing the lesser demon and eating the burger with tomato.
When faced with situations where my words carry the weight of dictating the outcome of a particular circumstance, my vocal mechanisms tense up. This is not caused by an anxiety disorder, or I would not be able to handle the pressure of playing varsity quarterback for the largest high school in Connecticut while balancing the workload of 7 AP classes through my latter 2 years of high school. Rather, this is my debilitating speech impediment.
Because of my stammer, I always feel uncomfortable while talking. Stimulating this feeling is the concerned, almost pitying look that people give me when they hear me speak for the first time. One time, specifically, I found myself shaking and contorting my face to squeeze out the difficult “P” sound beginning my name in front of a Chick-Fil-A employee, who proceeded to scream for my help because she thought I was having a seizure in my car. Talking has always been a chore for me ––elucidated by a conscious, mental sigh that reads “here we go again” every time I am dragged into contributing to a conversation. My stutter follows me everywhere. Unlike other stressors, there is no temporary escape from my speech. People look to parties, going out to dinner, and sitting at a cafeteria table with friends to relieve them of life’s downpour of responsibility, but these are the situations I dread the most. Controlling my stuttering lips is a waning, exhausted mind, and I am so tired of being so tired.
It has been at times where my mind has been the most fatigued, nonetheless, where I have grown the most as an individual in accepting my disability as a part of who I am. I am not Patrick, but rather P-P-P-Patrick when introducing myself verbally, and this may be the case for my entire life. My wedding vow may not sound as assertive as I would want it to be and may sound like “I-I-I d-d-do”, but that does not mean I would love my wife any less than saying a crisper “I do.” My acceptance, however, is not capitulation. I devote many hours a week practicing my speech at home by talking to myself in the mirror and having nightly conversations with my parents. I will even bring my dog aside and have a conversation with him to work on my speech. I am never able to say the difficult “G” and “B” sounds in social situations as fluently as when I say “good boy” to end a conversation with my dog. It is in such low-stress situations where my speech is the most fluent, and where I find the most hope and optimism, as I believe one day I will have complete liberation of speech, and my name will finally be just Patrick.
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Tomatoes (College Essay)