My AAC is my normal voice

CN: abusive speech therapy

When I was a child I was put in speech therapy because I didn't speak properly.

Sounds don't work that way. They don't combine those ways. They are more predictable than that. Don't you know, don't you know, don't you know.

Just do this. (But how?)

Just do what I say. (I know I'm wrong. I'm trying, it's not good enough)

Say these again. You need to repeat until you do it right. (But, why does saying cat like you do matter? people already know what I say)

You aren't trying hard enough, nobody will ever understand you. (I can't make sounds go right order in words you don't make me say over and over again anyways. I'm not saying anything. I don't want more words to say over and over.)

You don't need anymore speech therapy. [You speak properly now]

Don't you know, that the people coming up to me and making fun of my voice is something that doesn't happen enough I don't know how to talk about it. I know my voice is uncanny valley. But none of this bullying that has lasted into adulthood happens. My speech is normal now. They said so.

Don't you know, I don't need any sorts of support, I can't just speak. My speech is normal you see. What I actually need for supports isn't what matters. It's what people deem as normal. It's what people deem as close enough to normal.

Don't you know, it's do I try hard enough, when anyone notices my speech isn't like theirs its because I'm not trying hard enough. Don't you know if I can't read aloud its because I'm not trying hard enough. Don't you know if I get overly fatigued and my mouth stops moving in anything like word positions its because I'm not trying hard enough. Don't you know I just need to try, with more energy than any person, non-disabled, or disabled has. Because I need to look like others want.

Or that's what I'm told. That's what I have been told. That's what I was told for much of my life.

I talk about not using AAC until I was an adult. I was told my speech was normal. I just needed to make it sound normal. It was just needing to try.

I wasn't directly told AAC was failing, but they didn't have to.

I was told I was normal I was told I was normal I was told I was normal. I was told I had to be normal.

If you don't speak like this nobody will understand you

There's no alternative. I wasn't told AAC was a failure, but they don't need to say that when you're told there's no alternative.

My AAC is my normal voice.

Do people have to be normal to be understood and important and relevant and people? No.

But if my speech is normal, then my AAC is my normal voice.

Why is saying nothing preferred? AAC at the doctors office

I do not need to ask why is it that I've had multiple doctors ask me why not everyone does this typing to them, but why?

Why are we so focused on speech as society, that even when you cannot speak because of illness you try, and won't turn to the phone you are already caring?

Why is speech so prioritized that typing is so much a failure, subhuman, thing to do, that saying nothing is preferred?

Why are these doctors, where it makes their lives easier, because I am the first patient in these scenerios, that they can easily get a picture of the situation, that treat me as something even close to human?

I know these answers. Or, at least I am not surprised by any of this. I was one of the people taught from birth how much I was a broken child because my speech wasn't like everyone else's. I am someone who has been told too many times to count how much my words don't exist, because I am typing. I am someone, with the trauma of forcing speech. I am someone with this in my body at all moments, as my body needs to remember how to respond to people, to communication.

But, at the same time. I cannot understand. I can't understand why someone would choose to be trying to talk through coughing so hard it is making you black out - and I've been directly told by a doctor I was the first patient they've ever seen that didn't try to do such a thing. It is so much easier, to not rely on the unreliable body parts which aren't working in these moments of illness.

I want to tell people, this is an option. I want to tell people, it's okay, you aren't taking it from some other people, if that's what they're afraid of. Or, if you are afraid of being like "those people" then get though this doctors appointment you need to get through and then read the words of those people. Listen. You have so much to learn.

I want to tell people that this is an option. That, they don't need to speak at all moments of time, even if they do usually. Even if they do all the time, except for illnesses like bronchitis, such as I am referencing as an example here.

You aren't wrong if you use AAC because of laringytis or bronchitis or anything of this sort. It's great! It's for everyone. Use it.

I want to tell people this is an option. And society is wrong, in saying that you need to try to speak. You don't need to force yourself. You don't need to spend energy, or oxygen, or physical pain. You don't need to try to speak when you physically can't. You simply don't need to. And there are options. You can do what works.

I want to question how people using AAC in these moments is normalized, rather than if anyone else will see these doctors with AAC. I want to question what is being done now, rather than why I was the first. I want to know, what are we doing, so that people can communicate, however they can, whenever they can.

And I want that to mean everyone.