Aphasia is a neurological condition that gradually degrades the ability to speak. I first heard of it when I was twelve in a song by the same name. In the song, the singer has metaphorical aphasia. He ends up saying “a lot of words” and he’s satisfied at first, but he doesn’t realize until the end of the night that he didn’t say what he wanted to at all:

“It’s not so much exactly all the words I used. It’s more that I was somehow down to let them loose.”

“Something tonight was such a let down on my pride.”

When I first heard this song, I absolutely wore it out. I learned all the lyrics and wrote them out so often it became a bored reflex. I felt that this was the theme of my life: struggling to speak at all, choking empty words out, and then embarrassment.

I don’t think writing helps my speaking. Actually, I think it’s the opposite, because I get in the habit of some high standard of expression that I can keep editing to achieve. But I’m trying to study it, get to the bottom of it, because everyone should be able to say what they mean.