Photo by Leroy Skalstad on Unsplash
A letter to every kid who moved to the back row, bought sweets to belong, and sang alone in their room because it was the only place their voice felt free.
Read time: 5 minutes
Dear 13-year-old me,
I know you’re excited. You’ve got your new bag, your new shoes, and honestly? You have absolutely no idea what’s coming. That’s okay. Neither did I, and I was you.
Right now you think the stutter is manageable. You’ve got tricks. That big processor in your brain is working overtime, like one of those old airport departure boards, the ones that flick, flick, flick through letters before landing on the destination. That’s you, every time someone asks you a question. Flick, flick, flick, searching for a word you can actually say instead of the one that’s going to block. You’re getting good at it. Too good. You don’t even know you’re doing it anymore.
But here’s what I want to tell you about Year 8, about the years that followed, about the slow quiet ways you started shrinking yourself down to fit.
You moved from the front of the class to the back. Not because you stopped loving learning. Because you stopped feeling safe.
You started at the front. Of course you did, you love learning. You always have. There’s a version of you that is genuinely, deeply curious about the world, and I hope you never lose that. But somewhere around Year 8, the front row started to feel like a spotlight. Every teacher who called on you randomly. Every time you had to say your own name and it just wouldn’t come.
So you moved back. Row by row, week by week, until you were at the back with the kids who didn’t care. Except you cared more than any of them. You just needed somewhere to hide.
And somewhere in there you started eating. Ice cream sandwiches. Peanut butter with ice cream an inch thick. Not because you were hungry. Because when your mouth was full, you didn’t have to speak. And when the food hit, something in your chest went quiet for a minute. You didn’t know what emotional eating was back then. You just knew it helped. In the way that cigarettes helped. In the way anything helps when you’re 14 and you’re carrying something heavy and no one has given it a name.
You figured something out early that took a lot of courage, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time: if you made them laugh first, they couldn’t laugh at you. The funny fat kid. The one who bought sweets for everyone, and yeah, I know where some of that money came from, and we’re not putting that in the blog, but you were buying something more than candy. You were buying belonging. You were paying for a seat at the table with your own pocket money.
People who grew up with a stammer often describe this exhausting performance: being likeable enough that no one notices what’s underneath. The social anxiety and stuttering fused together into one big act that you put on every single day. It is exhausting being on stage all the time when all you want is to sit down.
But here’s the thing I need you to know: the kids who stuck around? They weren’t there because of the sweets. They were there because of you.
You were so busy being the person you thought they needed, you had no idea who you actually were.
Then there was English class. You’d managed to navigate everything else. The airport board in your head had become so fast, so fluid, you were almost invisible as someone who stutters. And then it happened. Speeches. Up the front. No recording yourself at home, no safety net, no way out. Stand up. Speak. Or fail.
That specific dread isn’t just nervousness. It’s anticipatory anxiety about stuttering, building for days before the date. You’d lie awake running the words. You’d rehearse in the mirror. You’d feel sick at breakfast. And then you’d get up there and the airport board would spin and spin and the words would scramble and you’d see it on their faces. Not cruelty, which would have been easier to hate, but that particular blank waiting that felt so much worse.
Some teachers thought you were slow. You, who sat at the front because you loved learning. You, who had more going on inside than most of them would ever know. That one still stings, doesn’t it.
There were so many crushes. And you never once crossed that line. Because who was going to love someone like you, overweight, stuttering, hiding behind jokes? That’s the story you were telling yourself. Not the truth. Just the story. But at 14, 15, 16, the story is all you have.
Dating with a stutter felt impossible. Friendships felt borrowed. The future felt like a fog you couldn’t see into. What future? You lived entirely in the present tense, this moment, this day, this lunch break, because looking ahead meant imagining yourself somewhere, speaking to someone, being someone, and that was just too much to hold.
But there was one thing. Music. You could sing. Did you know that? You probably did. Alone in your room, headphones on, or just the radio, the stutter vanished. The block lifted. The airport board went still. It mattered because for a few minutes every day you were free. Music was the first place you ever heard your own voice without shame. It was telling you something about who you are, not just a person who stutters, but a person who feels things deeply and needs to express them. One day you’ll find other ways to do that too. I promise.
You were the darkness that no one knew, because on the outside you were always laughing. That is not a small thing to carry.
I’ve thought about what I’d say if I could sit next to you. I’ve actually got goosebumps writing it.
I wouldn’t lead with advice. I wouldn’t tell you it gets better, or give you a list of techniques, or explain the neuroscience of stuttering identity. I would sit down next to you in that back row, put my arm around you, and let you cry. Really cry, the kind you’ve been holding back for years. And I wouldn’t say a single word until you were ready.
And then, when the room went quiet, I’d tell you this:
You are not broken. You are not dumb. You are not your stutter. You are not the gap between the word you meant to say and the one that came out. There is a life, a whole, full, loud, connecting, meaningful life, waiting for you on the other side of this. Not because you fix anything. Because you stop trying to.
The self-worth you’re looking for? It’s not in the sweets you’re handing out. It’s not in the laughs you’re performing. It’s not in the cigarettes or the back row or the ice cream at 10pm. It was there the whole time. Right there in the kid who moved to the front of the class because he loved learning.
That kid was always worth showing up for.
If you’re reading this and you recognise that kid, the one hiding in the back row, performing for acceptance, eating away the feelings, singing alone in their room so their voice could finally be free, this is for you.
You are a PWS.
Not a person who stutters.
A
Powerful.
Wonderful.
Speaker.
You always were.
With all the love I didn’t know how to give back then,
Eddie, Speak With Space
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