Mirrors that reflect strangely

Haikus for Lent (2) (revisited)

I am dyslexic. 
I see the world through mirrors
that reflect strangely.

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The original version of this haiku was posted on February 27, 2020.

First off, don’t feel badly for me. I rewired my brain years ago. My older brother and sister started the rewiring by drilling into my five-year-old brain a sense of numbers. That enabled me to move easily through most arithmetic and math classes.

My fourth grade teacher recognized I had challenges with reading and writing. She taught me several eye exercises to improve my focus and vision, which dramatically helped my reading. My handwriting was another problem entirely, but I dealt with that one by tracing a friend's excellent cursive style over and over until my handwriting resembled a shaky version of his.

All the way though elementary, junior high and high school I sensed that most people saw a different world than I did. I came up with the idea of looking at the world reflected in mirrors until the images I saw approximated what others seemed to see. Eventually I was able to do the image flipping and mirroring in my mind and once that became a habit a lot of the dyslexia challenges faded away.

These days when I am tired or stressed dyslexia reminds me that it is still around. That’s when pronunciation, reading and dealing with long number or character strings becomes difficult. But, hey, I drink a couple of good beers and the sharp edges soften up.