Aphasia: Part 2
I talk in monotone. They call it “prosity,” the lack of inflection in one’s voice. There’s nothing funny about that, but perhaps I don’t see the humor in it yet. It only adds to my flat affect, oh boy…I don’t know anyone else with this problem, which makes me feel deeply isolated.
I have aphasia.
I stutter and talk in fits and starts
and I can’t think of the right word to say.
Like a dim light in the distance,
the right word sways and bounces
and then vanishes.
I live in two worlds. Pre-stroke and post. The one where I matter, and the one where I feel irrelevant. Healthy and disabled. Half of my body is able and half has the disability. Binary opposites. (I can’t move my right arm or hand for anything practical at all.) But all of my speech is affected (it’s relentless; I cannot get away from myself) ….and my cognition and my desire—all kinds of desires. My desires are not completely extinguished but almost.
Beryl said, “Let the dust settle, be kind to myself, don’t perform, be genuine cause that you connects to other people; right now be selfish. Don’t think of what anybody wants you to say. (I’ve taken to italicizing my words to emphasize them. Even in my writing I’m afraid that the words will echo my speech in its flatness. I don’t hear it, the flatness, because I’m struggling to just to pronounce the various sounds.)
Another Day in Paradise 
