Fear of pushing send

I live in a constant fear of pushing send or publish. It may sound silly but it might even be my largest fear. Sure I can be afraid of the occasional spider but that's just the thing, they are only occasional. Not something that I encounter every, single, day. Whether it's texting with a friend, writing on Facebook, sending email or just typing this on my blog. I know my dyslexia is a big part of the problem and I hate using it as a "excuse" for my spelling and grammar. I hate having to explain my bad spelling and grammar mistake. I wish I just could think about what I wanted to write without having to worry about the letters.

I'm from Sweden so English is not my native language. Sure I could use that as a "excuse" as well but that is so not the point. The thing is I have just as much trouble writing in Swedish as in English. Perhaps even more since almost all I read is in English now days. When I got my diagnosis I was 19 years old. Had just started university and had a lecture in what different aid the school provided for handicapped persons. When the she started talking about dyslexia I almost cried. I knew I had to do something. They provided a free test and I took it. The results was clear, I had dyslexia.

I sort of always knew though. I have always struggled with spelling and grammar. No matter how many hours I prepared I always made several mistakes. Even thought I know how to spell the word, the letters just do not want to come out in the right order. Or even the right letters for that matter. A common mistake for me is to mix up the letters b,d,p,q. My mother have always tried to get the teachers to make me take a test before but they always said "But she is doing so well in school, she would never do that if she had dyslexia". Fact is I did, except in learning Swedish, English and German. I somehow did okay though.

I have always liked to read and that is probably the one thing that saved me. The test showed I had way below average reading speed, ability to detect misspellings, and trouble with rhyme and have no innate understanding of the phonetic alphabet. On the positive side it also showed that I have above average understanding of meaning of words and that when writing a summary of a text and getting the time to think, re-read and focus I do very well. So the theory is that since I have read so much I am doing well as long as I get the time I need.

A bookmark I made to remind my self to continue to read

This has encourage me to read even more, since that seems to be the thing that helps me the most. Of course spell-check is a huge help, but I find it hard to learn from that. Also it almost feels like I rely to much on them. Though many of my mistakes don't show in the spell-checker and that is what I usually worry about when writing a text. There are so many weird and odd mistakes I do and that I can't find myself. Sometimes if I can, I take help from my boyfriend. Other times I just press send especially when it's something that I have to send just at that time. The absolutely worst is when I want to write but don´t have to. More times then not I am to afraid so I simply just don´t write it.

So no matter how illogical it it. It is one of my biggest fear. Because I know how unprofessional spelling mistakes look. How much comments and hatred grammar and spelling errors can cause online. And at the same time I know that there is no easy way around it. When I was little I instead of trying to write a word that I did not know how to spell, I instead rewrote the whole sentence using other words. Sometimes ending up with totally nonsense sentences. I know it's a bad habit but still do it sometimes and I have to try really hard to stop myself from doing it.

So perhaps I am using this as an excuse for not posting for a few months, perhaps I just really needed to get this of my chest, hoping that I wont hesitate about writing. I guess I just need to keep calm and write on!