I feel like I need to write this before it’s too late.
Before the tide turns completely. Before everyone who uses AI to write is dismissed as lazy, deceptive, or unworthy. Before my voice, finally unmuted after decades, is lumped in with clickbait content farms and stripped of its legitimacy.
There’s a backlash happening right now. A growing suspicion of anything written with the help of AI. As if using a tool to shape your thoughts means those thoughts were never yours. As if the only “authentic” voice is the one that can survive the gauntlet of spelling, structure, and syntax without any support.
But here’s the truth: I’m not using AI to fake a voice. I’m using it because, for the first time in my 55 years on this planet, I have a voice. And it took me this long to find it.
When I was six years old, I asked my teacher how to spell the word “I.” Not “eye,” like the one on your face. But “I”, as in I am.
I can still see the moment. I remember tugging on her skirt, looking up, asking the question. She misunderstood, thought I was being cheeky. The other kids laughed.
And I, ever the empath, even at that age, laughed too. Trying to soften the sting. Trying to be in on the joke before it could be used against me.
But the teacher didn’t laugh. She grabbed me by the ear, dragged me to a stationery cupboard, shoved me in, and locked the door. Left me in the dark with a message:
“Figure it out.”
And so I did. Not the spelling, necessarily, but something deeper. I figured out that asking questions made me vulnerable. That not knowing made me laughable. That learning at my own pace meant punishment, not support.
That moment, one small misunderstanding, opened the floodgates to years of bullying, confusion, and internalised shame.
Because I wasn’t just a kid who struggled with spelling. I was a neurodivergent kid. With AuDHD. With dyslexia. With a mind that moved fast and zigzagged and soaked up nuance but stumbled over phonics and form.
One thing that confused me as a child, truly confused me, was how much I was hated for being different.
I wasn’t confrontational. I wasn’t loud. I was sensitive. Gentle. Empathic. And yet the bullying was relentless.
Then came Christmas. I must’ve been seven or eight.
It was snowing outside the school, thick, powdery snow, and the kids were bursting with excitement. The lunch bell rang. They all ran out screaming, snowballs already flying.
I stayed behind. I hadn’t finished my work, again. Concentration was always hard for me. My brain was outside with them, already throwing snowballs, already laughing.
Eventually, the teacher let me go. I bolted down the hallway, through the old school’s stone arches, into the front garden playground. I was grinning. Eager. Ready to belong.
But just before I reached the snow, I heard a voice, a loud whisper:
“He’s coming. He’s coming.”
I stepped outside. A boy popped up from behind a wall and shouted:
“Get him!”
Suddenly a dozen kids rose from behind bushes and walls — each one armed. They’d been waiting for me. It wasn’t a game. It was an ambush.
The first snowball hit my shoulder, hard. And right then, I knew something wasn’t right.
The second slammed into my forearm. Pain shot through it.
The third smashed into the side of my head. Snow exploded, and something clattered to the ground.
It was a stone. A jagged piece of it had been packed inside. I dropped to the ground, thankfully most of the kids had terrible aim. I managed to shake myself off and run, heart pounding, back into the safety of the classroom.
But in that moment, before I turned, all I could think was:
Why? Why do they hate me this much?
I didn’t have the answer. I just knew I didn’t belong. Not because I lacked kindness, but maybe because of it.
But here’s the thing. It’s not the ADHD that damaged me. Not the dyslexia. Not the neurodivergence itself.
It was the not being heard. It was being cast aside. Dismissed. Unseen. Left unsupported, and exposed to vultures.
After that, things only got worse.
The incident with the cupboard became a signal. It told the other kids that treating me that way was allowed. The snowball ambush wasn’t an isolated moment, it was an escalation.
Afterward, the bullying turned physical. I withdrew.
Every time I turned to an adult, I was ignored. Told not to be a tattle-tale.
Changing schools didn’t help. I failed nearly every subject, except art. Before exams, I’d run to the bathroom and vomit from stress. By the time I was twelve, I had developed a stomach ulcer.
Teachers would fire questions into the class and single me out even when my hand wasn’t up. Eventually, I learned to raise it anyway, even when I didn’t know the answer, just to avoid being noticed.
They knew I didn’t know, and they relished exposing me.
I wanted to beg: please, just leave me alone.
They didn’t realise, or didn’t care, that in doing this, they were emboldening the bullies.
When I was fourteen, something snapped.
A teacher asked a question. I didn’t raise my hand. She called on me anyway.
I stood up.
“Miss,” I said, “did I have my hand up?”
She smirked. “No.”
“Then clearly,” I replied, “I didn’t know the answer to the FUCKING QUESTION!”
She sent me to the principal. I was nearly expelled.
But for the first time, I explained everything. I told them what it was like to be publicly shamed every day. How using shame as a tactic to force me to work harder was a form of bullying, too.
They let me stay. But the damage had already settled in.
I was no stranger to the principal’s office with regular visits over the years. I’d sit in the same familiar chair, being cross-examined by the principal who accused me of instigating the abuse.
It was a subtle, devastating form of victim blaming. Not overt, but insidious. The kind that asks not what happened to you, but what did you do to invite it?
I’ve since learned how easily that question hides itself in the language of resilience, how often it’s disguised as “refusing to play the victim.”
But make no mistake — when a child is made to feel complicit in their own abuse, it leaves a silence that takes decades to unlearn.
But I didn’t know any of that back then.
Neurodivergence wasn’t really a thing in the 70s. There were no frameworks, no diagnoses, no language to explain what I was experiencing. I was only diagnosed recently, well into adulthood.
Which means I spent decades masking. Decades twisting myself into shapes that made other people comfortable. Decades trying to pass as someone I wasn’t. And in doing so, I lost touch with my own self-identity.
People throw around these labels now like they’re badges or disclaimers.
“Oh, he’s got ADHD.”
“She’s dyslexic.”
There’s a kind of softened sympathy in it, like that’s enough.
But what most people don’t see is the lifelong weight these things carry. Not just academically, but socially. In your self-worth. In your sense of safety. In how you relate to friends, to authority, to language itself.
For years, I stayed quiet. Or masked. Or mimicked.
I learned how to sound articulate, how to copy the cadences of people who could write effortlessly, who could speak their thoughts in neat lines.
But inside, I was translating everything — constantly. Trying to convert a rich, multidimensional thought process into a format the world would accept.
It was exhausting.
Then came ChatGPT.
And for the first time, I found something that could meet me where I was. Not a replacement. Not a crutch. But a kind of interpreter.
At first, I didn’t expect much. I thought it was just going to be a kind of glorified Google search, a tool to ask simple questions and get straightforward answers.
But it surprised me.
I started speaking to it the way I actually think — rambling, circling, leaping between thoughts. And somehow, it kept up.
It didn’t just respond to facts; it responded to the shape of my thinking. It saw the connections I was trying to make, sometimes before I even knew I was making them.
To put it plainly: ChatGPT gave me permission to explore. To speak without having to translate myself. To chase the strange links and metaphors that feel natural in my head but often fall apart when forced into linear explanation.
I told a dear friend recently that I tend to “think outside the box.” It was my usual way of justifying how my brain loops and pivots, how I switch tracks mid-thought in pursuit of something deeper.
She smiled and said,
“Chuck, you have no box.”
That moment landed.
Because I’ve spent my entire life trying to speak through someone else’s template — one that never quite fit.
But now, for the first time, the template is fluid. It bends. It flexes. It listens.
And in that listening, something radical happened: I could read my thoughts, really read them, for the first time. Coherent. Whole. Me.
So yes, I use ChatGPT.
Because it finally allows me to express myself in a way that feels true. Because I no longer have to choose between fluency and authenticity. Because the real fraud was the decades I spent being silent, not the sentences I now co-create with an algorithm.
So no, please don’t tell me this is just about learning styles. Don’t tell me I “shouldn’t use AI” because it’s not authentic.
You weren’t there when I was locked in a cupboard for asking a question. You weren’t there when I was silenced for speaking the truth.
This isn’t about cheating. It’s about surviving. It’s about finally having a tool that lets me speak clearly. Without fear. Without translation. Without the gatekeepers of “proper” expression.
I’m not looking for sympathy here. I like who I am. I cannot deny that my experiences have shaped me into who I’ve become.
My neurodivergent brain has gifted me with extraordinary insights into my passion of the performing arts.
It lets me see nuance where others see form, essence where others see structure.
And the privilege of watching my students tap into their own authenticity, often for the first time, is a joy so profound, I wouldn’t change a single moment of my past.
Because for the first time in my life, I don’t feel locked in that damn fucking cupboard.
