I Couldn't Pronounce My Name

I was 11 years old, standing in front of my class, trying to say my own name.

Godswill.

Two syllables. Nine letters. The name my mother gave me. The name I had heard every day of my life.

And I could not get it out.

I remember my foot. That's the part people never understand. My right foot, stamping the floor, once, twice, five times, like I was trying to kick the word out of my body. Like if I hit the ground hard enough, the G would come loose.

Somewhere behind me, somebody laughed. Then two people. Then the whole room had that sound, that low, hissing, half-swallowed laugh that people do when they're trying to be polite about your suffering and failing.

I finished saying my name. It took maybe eleven seconds. Eleven seconds is a very long time when forty people are watching your mouth.

I sat down. I did not cry. I had stopped crying about it a long time before that.

Let me tell you how bad it was.

In literature class, when we were reading aloud and the text had a character who stuttered, a stammering character, written for laughs, my classmates would turn around and hand me the passage. "Godswill, read this one. Read this one, na." And they would be laughing before I even opened my mouth.

They thought it was funny. Casting the stutterer as the stutterer.

I was so bad that other stutterers laughed at me. I want you to sit with that for a second, because I need you to know I'm not some smooth-talking coach who read a book about this. Boys who stammered themselves, boys who knew this pain from the inside, would still laugh at me, because at least they weren't that bad.

I was the floor. I was the bottom of the ladder.

And here is the part that still catches in my throat, all these years later.

I was brilliant.

I don't say that to boast. I say it because it's the cruellest part of this thing. I knew the answers. I read everything. I had thoughts in my head that were sharper than what half the class was saying out loud.

And I never raised my hand. Not once, if I could avoid it.

I watched boys I was academically miles ahead of stand up and speak and get praised for saying, badly, the thing I already knew perfectly. I watched them talk to the girls I liked. There was a girl, there's always a girl, and I would plan the whole conversation. Word by word. Rehearse it walking home. And then I'd see her in the corridor and my body would just... lock. And I'd walk past her like I hadn't seen her.

She probably thought I was rude. Or shy. Or slow.

I was none of those things. I was trapped.

Now let me talk about you.

Because I think I know your day. Not because I'm clever, because I lived it.

You're in a meeting. Someone asks a question and the answer arrives in your head immediately, fully formed, better than what anybody else is going to say. And you start the internal maths, can I say that word? Will I block on the P? Should I wait? Let me wait small. And by the time you've fought your way to the first syllable, someone with half your understanding has already said it. Badly. And everyone is nodding.

You nod too. You've been nodding for years.

You've stopped introducing yourself. At events, at church, at anything with a circle of chairs and a "let's go round the room." Because your name, your own name, the one thing you should never have to fight for, locks in your throat. So you've learned to arrive late. Or sit at the edge. Or let someone else introduce you.

There's a girl. You've rehearsed the opening line for days. You know exactly what to say. And when the moment comes, your mouth betrays you, and you laugh it off and change the subject and go home and lie on your bed staring at the ceiling.

You dodge phone calls. Voice notes are fine. Chats are fine. But a ringing phone makes your chest tighten, so you let it ring and you text back "sorry, was busy, what's up?"

And you swap words. This is the one nobody outside the club knows about. You have a whole secret dictionary in your head. You wanted to say "problem" but you knew the P would catch, so you said "issue." You wanted the chicken but the C was risky, so you ordered the fish. You have spent your entire life eating the wrong meal, saying the wrong word, being the wrong version of yourself, just to avoid eleven seconds of stamping your foot in front of strangers.

And then, recently, you dragged a word in front of someone who matters to you. And you saw it. That little flicker. That half-second pause. That small laugh they didn't mean anything by.

And you were fourteen again.

Here is what nobody ever told me. And it changed everything.

For years I believed my stutter was the enemy.

It wasn't.

Think about it honestly. When are you at your worst? Not when you're alone. Not when you're singing along to music in your room. Not when you're talking to a small child, or your mother, or your closest friend at 2am when nobody is judging anything.

You're at your worst when you're afraid of stuttering. In the interview. On the phone. In front of the girl. When the room goes quiet and it's your turn.

That is not a coincidence. That is the loop.

You anticipate the block. Your body tenses, throat, chest, jaw. Tension makes the block worse. The block gets laughed at. The laugh feeds the fear. The fear feeds the next block. Round and round, for twenty years, tightening.

It's a loop. And a loop can be interrupted.

Read that again, because I need it to land somewhere deep:

This is not proof that your faith was too small, or that God said no. I was prayed for more times than I can count, by pastors, by prophets, by aunties who meant every word. And I still stammered on the drive home. That doesn't mean prayer failed you. It means you were praying about a lock while nobody ever handed you the key.

And it is not permanent brokenness. It is not "just who you are."

It is a physical, learnable, interruptible pattern of tension and fear. And nobody in this country ever sat you down and taught you how to work it.

Until now.

I found a way out. Not a cure. Control.

I want to be very careful with you here, because you've been lied to before.

I am not going to tell you I cured my stutter. I won't insult you with that. Anybody who promises to permanently erase your stammer for ₦9,800 is either lying to you or hasn't lived this.

Here is what actually happened to me, and it's better than a fake miracle:

I took control.

I can say my name. I can walk into a room and introduce myself without the panic rising in my chest. I speak in meetings, I lead them. I talk for a living now. Me. The boy who stamped his foot to force out the letter G.

Do I still block sometimes? Yes. Under pressure, when I'm exhausted, when I'm caught off guard, sometimes a word catches. But here's the difference, and it is the whole difference:

My stutter went from being the thing that ran my life to being a thing I manage. Like a man who manages his knee. He still knows it's there. He just doesn't stop walking.

That's what I'm offering you. Not a miracle. Control.

And I have put every single step of it into one place.