Moving was a constant in my childhood. Every new school meant starting over, leaving behind the few friendships I’d managed to form, and jumping into yet another unfamiliar classroom. My education was already unstable, but what happened at home turned even the most basic learning into something I feared.

My stepfather took it upon himself to “help” me with my spelling homework, though help wasn’t what he offered. Each word became a chance for punishment, and each spelling test felt like a trap. He would quiz me on each spelling word, making me write them down as he called them out, and then he would go over them, one by one, pointing out any mistakes. At random, he’d pause and ask, “Would you bet your butt that this one’s correct?” no matter if I’d spelled it correctly or not. And when I was wrong, his belt came out. It wasn’t about learning; it was his enjoyment of inflicting pain. His idea of education was built on shame and humiliation, making every word I struggled with feel like a personal failure. And when he was done, I was forced to hug him, a final act of control, as if to seal the lesson with a twisted show of “affection.”

In time, I learned to memorize words by sight, not to learn, but to survive his “teaching.” But my method didn’t work in the classroom, and my grades suffered. I began hiding my homework, fearing he would use any mistake as a reason to “correct” me again. I even forged my mom’s signature on missed assignments, desperate to avoid his twisted version of teaching. Every interaction was a game I had to play to escape his punishments.

Now, even as an adult, spelling, grammar, and punctuation feel like hurdles I’ll never fully conquer. I rely on spell check and Grammarly because the scars from those “lessons” still run deep. Writing on a whiteboard in front of others brings back a wave of anxiety as if someone will notice my weaknesses and expose how I struggle.

But I’ve come a long way from those days. I found the courage to push past what was forced upon me and earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Each step in my education was an act of defiance, a reclaiming of my right to learn, grow, and thrive on my own terms.

And if you’re reading this thinking I misused a comma or spelled something wrong, yeah, probably. If it weren’t for real-time spell check, I’d never write a word. But I write anyway. Because survival doesn’t always sound polished, and that’s okay.