My Alter Ego is a Proper English Gentleman
At first, I thought it might be too weird to start The Millinery 2.0 with an introductory post that didn’t focus on what I’ve been up to over the past year or why I’m reviving this formerly comatose blog. And then I remembered a few helpful, humbling facts.
The first iteration of The Millinery had little to no site traffic, so any “audience” I’m worried about losing doesn’t even exist yet.
Per the above, if they weren’t there at the beginning, they won’t care about why you’re restarting the blog now. So, just start how you want to.
This isn’t an easy topic to write about (I’ve tried and failed to meet several self-imposed deadlines), which means it’s a great topic to write about.
And what’s the topic? My alter ego…which happens to be an English gentleman. Specifically, one modeled after this man:
The King’s Speech (2010)
Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504320/mediaviewer/rm3176628480/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
I want to preface - I haven’t always viewed my alter ego with such precision and clarity. For most of my life, it’s existed in an opaque, shapeless form that has only recently crystallized in the past couple of years. And the process of defining it is still very much that: a process. I’m not even completely sold on calling it an “alter ego” because even when it’s present, I’m still very much me…just a little more verbose and tangential.
See, my “alter ego” is my stutter. Stammer. Speech impediment or speech disorder if we’re getting clinical. And while I could refer to my stutter as just that, isn’t it more interesting (and a lot funnier) to think of it as another entity entirely? Sure, it’s annoying, embarrassing, and tiring, but that’s a given. And that’s also boring to write about. It’s only in the past couple of years, as I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably be dealing with this speech disorder for the rest of my life, that I’ve started to find the humor in it. Initially, doing so was an act of self-preservation…until I realized it provided some great material.
A little context: I can’t say for sure when I first began stuttering, but I remember going to a hospital to get some tests done when I was around 6 or 7 and being rewarded with a Webkinz afterward. (Pro tip: Nothing softens the blow of a speech impediment diagnosis like a virtual pet). I do know that the likelihood of my having a stutter was higher than average because it’s present on both sides of my family, most immediately with my dad and my late grandfather on my mom’s side. According to the American Speech Language Hearing Association, stuttering is more likely to persist if the disorder is already present within other family members and it starts appearing by age 3 and a half. Appropriately, this is dubbed “persistent stuttering” and impacts up to 1% of adults, as reported by Cleveland Clinic. At least I’m in the top 1% of something.
“It’s only in the past couple of years, as I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably be dealing with this speech disorder for the rest of my life, that I’ve started to find the humor in it. Initially, doing so was an act of self-preservation…until I realized it provided some great material.”
Compounded with the stressful aftershocks of my parents' divorce a few years later, which increased my already underlying anxiety and depression, my chances of overcoming a stutter were - how do you say? - completely fucked.
However, I didn't know this at the beginning. Several forays into speech therapy taught me beneficial breathing techniques, tricks for working past troublesome sounds, and the importance of speaking slowly and deliberately. I also learned that while teasing was unavoidable, I would find people - kids at that point since I was in elementary school - who were either knowledgable or kind enough to not make fun of me or open-minded enough to rise above their initial judgment.
And I know those speech therapy sessions worked because I had several years where it was like I didn’t even have a stutter. Or, at most, it was like a dormant volcano; occasionally, there may have been a flare-up, but to my recollection, nothing consistent. I didn’t stress about reading in class. I was the lead in school plays. In the 7th grade, I even won a Shakespeare recitation contest. Seriously.
And then, in 2010 - around the same time as my Shakespearean victory - The King’s Speech premiered, a royal tale of stuttering that won best picture at the Oscars, among other accolades. All well-deserved wins, by the way. I think that movie is incredible, and it was one of the first - if the only - depiction of stuttering on screen that I felt accurately showed the byproducts of emotional turmoil and frustration caused by this disorder. For better or worse, I felt seen when watching that movie. And if I had to guess, it was this profoundly personal attachment to the content combined with tween idealism and my (admittedly delusional) then-belief that Hollywood - and the Oscars’ best pictures especially - were a marker of societal progress that made me think The King’s Speech would be the movie to change things. That Geoffrey Rush coaxing a coherent, clear speech out of Colin Firth in his charming, no-bullshit manner would generate more understanding - and subsequently less teasing - about stuttering.
Spoiler alert - that was not the case.
It’s hard to know precisely when my stuttering began to increase, but I’ll latch onto 2012 as a turning point. This was the year I graduated from middle school, voluntarily auditioned for a musical theatre intensive (emphasis on intense), and moved away - kicking and screaming - from my home state of Rhode Island to a new life and new school in Connecticut.
The latter hit the hardest. I was no longer with my friends and the community I had built over the past several years. And while I was unabashedly vocal about my displeasure with my mom, I was reserved and quiet in other situations, especially during my first year there. Yet, even though I was pissed to be starting at square one, I couldn’t have been doing so in a better, more welcoming community. In a weird, poetic twist of fate, my freshman-year history teacher (who would become my advisor throughout the next four years) also had a stutter. And seeing her teach class day in and day out was its own source of fuel and inspiration for me to keep going.
However, I also knew my stutter was back in a way that it hadn’t been for a while, so I turned to old habits to cope. I began to selectively “miss” troublesome verbiage when reading in class. I developed specific speaking patterns that lessened the likelihood that I would stumble on a word. When we had to film skits for class projects, I learned to edit out my stutter in iMovie, even though it left a weird moral aftertaste. Sometimes though, the easiest thing to do was feign ignorance, to “forget” the name of a movie or song even as it relentlessly echoed in my mind.
My go-to method, which I still use on a daily basis, was to become something of a walking thesaurus, constantly sourcing and substituting synonyms for problem words while speaking. Sometimes it feels like I’m live editing while talking; I envision my speech playing on a teleprompter screen that is constantly changing, rewinding, fast-forwarding, etc., depending on what sounds are giving me trouble in the moment. Because, yes, it’s not always the same words or sounds that trigger my stutter - that would be too simple! One day, I might have no problem asking for oat milk in my cappuccino, and the next day that “o” sound might be an arduous task, as it was this last weekend at brunch. (And yes, I know this is the most LA example I could have used).
“My go-to method, which I still use on a daily basis, was to become something of a walking thesaurus, constantly sourcing and substituting synonyms for problem words while speaking.”
However, there are certain sounds - and consequently certain substitutions - that have remained troublesome for me over the years. I've included some of these repeat offenders below:
Movie = film
“m” sounds in general are a 50/50 toss-up in terms of trickiness
3:45 = a quarter to four
the two “f” sounds in “forty-five” are killer
12:30 = half past 12
the “th” sound in thirty is annoying as fuck, and I avoid it at all costs
These antiquated, somewhat pretentious substitute phrases combined with the lasting influence of Geoffrey Rush’s role in The King’s Speech led to the creation of my proper English gentleman “alter ego” idea. At first, this was just a comedic aside/half-baked analogy until I started to think about it more seriously around March/April 2022. What if my stutter was another person entirely? What if they were a character in a TV show? What kind of person would they be? What would their name be? Their mannerisms? Could I use this as a vehicle to explore/share what stuttering is like - at least for me - in a new, comedic way? Is there a story here for me to tell?
I’m still grappling with these questions almost a year later, and their growing real estate in my mind makes me feel like there's something here worth exploring. But before I can fully turn my attention to doing so, I feel like I need to get the driving force for this idea down on paper. And since my relationship with my stutter is one of my least favorite things to discuss, it’s taken a lot of time, a lot of coffee, and a lot of procrastination to write even this one introductory post. And to be honest, I’m not 100% sold on this current draft. But it’s a start. And somewhere between my third and fourth missed deadlines, I realized that it’s not possible for me to say everything I want to say about my stutter in one go. Especially when I’ve seen my relationship to it bleed into areas of my life - work, dating, friendships, etc. - in new, complex ways over the past year alone. Sometimes in ways that are painful, sometimes in ways that are hilarious. More often than not, in ways that are both.
“These antiquated, somewhat pretentious substitute phrases combined with the lasting influence of Geoffrey Rush’s role in ‘The King’s Speech’ led to the creation of my proper English gentleman “alter ego” idea. At first, this was just a comedic aside/half-baked analogy until I started to think about it more seriously.”
So, here’s where I’m at. As my stutter makes itself more permanently present in my life, I can choose to either ignore it, as I’ve done in the past in the vain hope that it will never appear, or I can address it head-on, with the caveat that it’s not the most important thing about me - not by a long shot.
If you’ve read this far…damn. Thank you. You are probably one of my family members or one of my friends who are practically family, and I appreciate you holding on for this long. If you happen to be neither and are wondering if this blog will solely focus on stuttering, please know that could not be further from the truth. I do have more to say on this subject, but I also have a lot of other topics I want to explore. And I’m talking hard-hitting stuff like why stools are the worst seating options ever, words whose meanings I’m never quite sure I understand, tips and tricks for establishing main-character energy, and, of course, the turbulent sea that is my dating life (as is expected of every Gen-Z/millenial woman with a blog).
Sound appealing? You’re still reading, so it must be to some degree. You are still reading...right? Right?
Alright, it’s almost 11:45 quarter to 12 as I write these final thoughts. It feels like the right time to sign off, so on behalf of my "alter ego" and me, thanks for reading.
Until next time,
Meredith
Sources:
https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/stuttering/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14162-stuttering
