Communication issues

When I was in sixth grade I can remember having to be excused from English class once a week to go to the speech office. I had speech therapy for a couple months during that year; evidentially my English teacher was tired of correcting my speech impediment. Well come to find out, I slurred and couldn’t pronoun certain letters correctly. My letter S and Z were slurred and were cut off in some words, for example, the word “specific” was pacific to me, and “zebra” was pronounced sebra. I’m not really sure if the therapy helped or not because I still have a awful time saying “specific,” but I think I do have the “z” words down! As I got into high school, things got a little more complicated. I recall a lot of people asking me where I came from, and I still get asked that frequently by my patients. I grew up in California but evidentially I had an accent. This “accent” gave me a lot trouble due to having to repeat or talk slower to either my classmate or just people listening to me. I don’t really remember that issue with my parents, but they were around me constantly so they were used to it. It wasn’t until then, that my communication issues were quite noticeable and inconvenient. I had always known in the back of my head that it was a problem, but as a teenager I was against doing anything about it. As a baby I had yellow jaundice, and as a result of it, my hearing was severely damage; well, so I’ve been told. Throughout my childhood I’m sure I missed out on a lot of things, like the correct ways of pronouncing things, and my so called “accent” is not an accent at all. Communication is a little easier now that I am older and, thanks to my ex husband, I now wear a hearing aid. Even though I can hear better now, I can still recall the feeling of confusion and displacement as a child trying to be involved in classroom activities. I can recall many recesses that I was made fun of and picked on, called “dummy” or “retard.” Now that I have been trying to look into my past, I don’t even think my teachers liked me. I clapped erasers a few times after class and I read out loud a lot, more than my fair share; I think that might have been my English class, that teacher gave me a hard time. I was told later in life by people that knew me well, that I act snobbish to other. People would ask me a question without getting my full attention and I would not reply or answer their questions; so to say the least I never really had too many friends. I now am very aware of my communication obstacles so I try to be very conscious of what is going on around me, yet that doesn’t change the emotional and silent scaring of my unheard communication as a child.