Today I found I’ve developed a lisp…

By Emily Mumford on August 5, 2014 in Emily's Personal Blog
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Today I recorded an updated video for my website. I set off for the meeting, with my lovely website design man Steven, feeling nervous about whether I would remember what I wanted to say,  but – after putting my make up on in preparation – feeling rather chuffed that – at 54 – I don’t look too bad at all – I have a new top with a very pretty neckline … all in all I felt pretty pleased with myself …

… and then it came to the bit where we played back the video …

“I’ve got a lisp!”

Steven looked at me rather bemused …

“I’ve got a lisp – there are all sorts of words – mostly with “S” in them – and I can’t say them properly!”

At first I thought I feel like I’m going mad – I don’t hear what other people hear – but being confirmed right was worse …

“Yes, I can hear it too… particularly when you say “muscles”…”

I looked at my face on screen and heard myself lisping, slurring my words … my cheeks seemed sunken, the lines on my face had never looked so deep and marked … every word I uttered sounded like someone who was either very old and couldn’t talk properly,  or someone who’d had some kind of episode where the muscles – there’s that word again – of their face had stopped working properly …

The drive home – despite two videos “in the bag” – felt oddly dark and sombre …

I thought about Byron Katie, “When we question our thoughts we realised what we think happened – didn’t happen” … “I love what is – I am neither too fat nor too thin – I appear as this now” …

… so could I love what is? … could I love myself with a lisp ?

It appears that in losing the back teeth on the top right hand side of my mouth – the end one was a wisdom tooth removed a while ago,  and the one next to it I lost 10 days ago – means that I can no longer speak as I did before …

“I sound like an old woman with no teeth”

“Is that true?”

I decided that probably it wasn’t true and that lisps are more characteristic of the young than the old – but a young person can have speech therapy – I think I am stuck like this because I was too much of a coward to have root canal treatment and try and save the tooth …

Tom can’t hear the lisp … and indeed when I play the video back on my computer I can barely hear it now … funny how in those moments of first detecting a slight difference I watched myself age thirty years before my eyes … and now the neckline of the new top does look really pretty … and the make up round my eyes really does camouflage the bags 🙂

So not the best time today 🙂 but it could have been a lot worse – at least I have that lifesaving question:

“Is it true?”

“Nah!!! It’s just me being a wannack again!”  🙂

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Emily MumfordView all posts by Emily Mumford