We’ve had a moment in our childhood where it made us think that maybe we aren’t normal like everyone else. That incident for many of us has caused insecurities or give us childhood trauma. For some of us we can overcome it over time and many others carry it with them for the rest of their lives believing that there’s something wrong with them that makes them stand out from the others in a wrong way. 

In Saleem’s Ted talk he talks about how he had faced many hurdles in his childhood due to his speech impairment, Saleem used to stutter when he was a kid, he was unable to get his sentences come out as one like others normally could. Due to him having speech impairment he got labeled as not a “normal” kid. Saleem goes on to talk about how he at a point in his childhood was scared to talk to anyone or even go as far as answering the phone because he feared what they would say or that he maybe won’t even be able to speak into the phone due to his anxiety. All this happening to him at such a young age, traumatized him of talking to others to the point he wouldn’t even try to talk to others anymore. Saleem talks about how even when he grew up to be in his teens the hate comments never stopped even though he wouldn’t be stuttering he would get made fun of for other things. 

In the Ted talk, Saleem talks about how he used to hate introducing himself as a kid because he’d always stutter on his name and jokes like “have you forgotten your name” would be said to him, when he wasn’t be able to introduce himself to others. He also said that he always used to be that kid who’d never raise his hand in class to ask or answer any questions despite knowing the answers. Saleem said “I’d go hide in the bathroom every time the phone would ring” He grew up feeling that if he spoke up it’ll be obvious there was something wrong with him that he wasn’t “normal”. All these incidents traumatized to the point where he stayed quite for most of the time. As a kid I can only imagine how it could’ve been for him to get made fun of for something that was totally out of his control. To be afraid to use your own voice because you thought something was wrong with you. To have to be so anxious around others and not get to enjoy your childhood fully. Being so young and having the courage to stand up to your bullies or raising your voice against them isn’t something so easy for others and Saleem’s confidence was already crushed when he was a young kid and so was his voice from the fear of getting picked on or not being “normal” like others.

After a few years, he made an educational video on the history of video games on YouTube, and he used his voice in his work. After publishing the video, he was very eager to see the comments from the viewers. Once he saw some positive comment, he got a confidence boost for his work that he had done and was planning on making a part too and felt proud of himself and his voice for the work that he was able to make it. “ 01:58 – 2: 18”. The positive comments under his video were his source of motivation to keep going as he had gone out of his comfort zone to make them in the first place. I would say that those comments meant a lot to him given how he used to get bullied when he was younger now, he was finally starting to be comfortable with his own voice, after so much discouragement and mockery it was finally his time to shine like others. 

But, as a cycle of life something bad almost always happens after something good. Soon enough the negative comments started pouring in one after another. They ranged from how they couldn’t understand him to making fun of him saying he was talking with peanut butter in his mouth “02:28 – 02:48”. And just like that the confidence that he had gathered from the positive comments was gone. Just like that once again he was uncomfortable with his own voice. He lost the motivation to work on a project like that again and lost the willingness to use his voice in his own videos. He tried his best to look at the negative comments as constructive criticism, but they only reminded him of his childhood life how he used to stutter for as long as he could remember and it all once again became traumatizing to him. 

I also had similar circumstances as Saleem. When I was in 3 and 4^th grade, I would constantly get bulled for how I used to look and mu skin color as I had a much darker skin tone then the others around me, I would get called names such crow or a monkey and whatnot. It discouraged me to go to school, which also resulted in me not having many friends in school. I also got bulled for being a different religion as them, majority of my country is Muslim, and I was the only Christian in my school and in the colony that I used to live in. The kids in my area and surrounding houses would treat me as if I’m an alien as if I’m not one of them because they didn’t know much or anything about my religion, it went as far as them asking me “are you an alien? Do you speak our language?” when I was born and raised in my country. Soon enough after nights of crying to sleep I learned how to ignore them and move on with my life and came to America to have a better life. Or so I thought even after coming to America with the hopes of having a better life, things didn’t go as planned. In middle school I ended getting bullied again but there’s so much that I can do so I put my head down and spent the 2 years that I had to spend there and went to high school where luckily things did get better. 

In conclusion, there will be plenty of people to look down on you to tell you that there’s something wrong with you even when you’re a completely normal person. They’ll try to bring you down with everything they have in them to make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin, make fun of you for something that’s out of your control or something they can’t quite understand. But you must move on and improve and show them they you can be better than them no matter how hard they try to bring you down. Because simply put giving up is not an option.