Life with a speech impediment and how I found my voice

Opinion piece by Bryn Yasui
Photos by Ed Clem

I felt my cheeks flush with a wave of heat, my heart sitting heavy in my stomach. Before the teacher said a word, I knew this feeling of anxiety all too well.

“Say your name and your favorite color,” she said.

“My name is Bwyn. It’s pink,” I replied.

My teacher’s eyes lingered on me for a significantly long moment while the other kids giggled until she moved on to the next student. I didn’t like the color pink — I hated pink as a matter of fact. I said pink because I couldn’t pronounce my actual favorite color, orange. It didn’t matter how much I strived to avoid saying words with L’s or R’s because they’re everywhere — even in my own name.

As if being forced to speak out loud at school wasn’t enough, my mother would stop me every other word to pronounce them again on the car rides home. It wasn’t long before I came to realize that no one would ask me for clarification or notice my mispronunciation in the first place if I didn’t talk at all.

For 13 years, I struggled with Functional Speech Disorder, otherwise known as a lisp.

Speech impediments are typically categorized as a childhood problem, subsiding by the age of five, according to online speech pathologist Dr. Caroline Bowen. At the time, I was eight years old.

I could overhear my mother and aunties gossiping at family dinners over appetizers, wondering when my speech impediment would disappear. Their faces read like a book with concern and I would quietly sit on the other side of the room, a wallflower.

This was the normal routine. “How is school?” and “How are your siblings doing?” were just a few of the redundant questions my family members would ask me. Responding with the shortest answer possible, I watched their eyes focus on my lips and the phonetic sounds instead. It was apparent that my family could care less about my personal life as they nodded their heads every so often with a “mhmm” and “is that so?”

Although everyone tried to listen, I was so convinced that no one heard a word I really said — they just heard my lisp. The more it occurred, it seemed as if my disorder began to define me in everyone’s eyes, including my own.

In elementary school, my friends would play basketball and ask me to join, but I would sneak away and jump into my mom’s car to attend speech therapy lessons instead. While these lessons were costly, my mother insisted they were worth it.

Every speech therapist my parents forced me to visit practiced confrontation methods to face my situation head on. In a small white room, I read long excerpts from books only to listen to a recording of myself stumbling over my words time and time again.

Inside my head, I was trapped in a glass box of my own insecurities ricocheting off the walls — my mouth forming words, perhaps even screaming at the top of my lungs — but no sound being heard from the spectators on the outside.

I cowered at the sound of my own voice.

After years of speech therapy, there was no improvement. Every two-hour session felt like an ongoing nightmare of facing my greatest weakness, hearing no progress and leaving the appointment with failure hanging on my shoulders.

The last speech therapist I spent time with hasn’t left my memory since our encounter. My head was held low as I walked into a small, quaint household in a residential neighborhood. This was no ordinary office for speech lessons. Walking into the house, a middle-aged woman smiled at me and embraced me in the warmest hug. For a second, I thought I was in the wrong place.

No claustrophobic white rooms or recording devices were to be found in her home; just an ordinary living room adorned with family portraits and vintage furniture. She told me to refer to her by first name. Mary smiled at me as she asked generic questions. “What is your family like? What do you like to do in your free time?”

Her large brown eyes were fixated on me, just me, as she asked follow-up questions with genuine interest. Those 20 minutes of just laughing, talking and becoming more acquainted with each other was the longest I’ve ever spoken to someone without being asked for clarification at all.

For the first time, I felt normal. I felt like an actual person contrary to being viewed as the special kid who needed help. Those clear glass walls were looking thinner than ever. Someone was finally listening.

She grinned and laughed as the conversation died down slowly. I didn’t want it to end.

“Bryn, I think I know how to help you with your speech impediment,” her eyes crinkled sympathetically as she put her hand on my knee.

For so long I had been ashamed, and in turn, morose about my lisp. I couldn’t imagine a future moving past my speech impediment and being able to talk out loud without fretting over every other word. I believed this was solely my problem to fix, but Mary provided the help I needed all along.

“When you’re talking and smiling at the same time, your words are enunciated much better. If you smile more and practice difficult words, I know you can outgrow this and talk to everyone like you were just talking to me.”

I was the roadblock in my own way when it came to overcoming the demon that haunted me day after day.

I followed her advice: slowing down when the tough words came up and smiling to improve my pronunciation. Entering high school, I finally quit speech therapy lessons for good.

Junior year came around and I jumped the gun by joining the school newspaper. I’ve been enthusiastic about writing for as long as I can recall — the silent world of self-liberation free from regulating. This was my escape from the humiliation; a safe space I confided in throughout the years of being muted. After all, words written on paper can’t be mispronounced.

My first day as an amateur reporter was nothing less than onerous. I approached a random student after many deep breaths and beads of sweat on my forehead. I felt my throat tighten and blood rush to my face as I began to ask a complete stranger questions. To my surprise, the students I interviewed didn’t laugh or judge me like I had anticipated. I had real conversations with my sources. We had a connection and I felt a sense of belonging I didn’t believe existed.

The more interviews I conducted, the more I fell in love with this feeling of engaging with others, growing comfortable with the sound of my voice and telling someone’s story through my words.

Walking through the halls and encountering fresh new faces was still another obstacle of its own. “Hi, my name is Bryn Yasui and I’m part of the Eagle Eye” gradually became easier to say without feeling myself talk too quickly or stumble over my name like I was a little kid again. Eventually, listening to others speak and focusing on them more than my own voice delivered a new breed of self-confidence.

I would smile, enunciate clearly while the source and I would have real conversations about topics that mattered at the time. There was that sensation of real, genuine communication I thought I had forgotten and developing confidence in myself flourished in my new found passion.

Here’s the thing about reporting: it’s not about talking, but soaking in information like a sponge and building a personal relationship with individuals to translate through words.

Journalism has become so much more than an industry consisting of questions and answers — storytelling through reporting allowed me to see the problem I had struggled with for 13 years of my life.

A person deserves to be heard.