Kaiya Stone - Everything is Going to be K.O.: An Illustrated Memoir of Living with Specific Learning Difficulties

AN ANIMA BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus

Text copyright Kaiya Stone, 2020

The moral right of Kaiya Stone to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB): 9781789544961

ISBN (E): 9781789544992

Cover Illustrations: Kaiya Stone

Design: Ben Prior | Head of Zeus Art Department

Author Photo: Renato Camilo

Head of Zeus Ltd

58 Hardwick Street

London EC 1 R 4 RG

WWW . HEADOFZEUS . COM

For Adam and Wilma

The ridiculousness of writing a memoir aged twenty-six is not lost on me. Its obviously a complete joke. Im neither a politician, rock star or sportsperson Im just a gobby little shit with a lot of things to say who has managed to wangle an editor who has the unenviable job of making it readable.

It is a truly human desire to make stories out of the events that befall us. We all simply want to understand, to come to some sort of conclusion, to weave what is in reality a thousand loose threads into a tapestry of meaning. We are desperate to take the chaos of existence and turn it into something beautiful and full of substance. Ultimately, we will fail. Life is not a pretty throw from Urban Outfitters with a general thrust and message. Life is screaming pain and confusion with a few moments of respite and, if youre lucky, a couple of really good puddings. I have embarked on an impossible task and all I can hope is that you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

I should address why this is a memoir. I could have written a thinly veiled autobiographical fictional novel. One garners more respect for that, I think. But it is my duty to tell my truth and label it as such. Also, you dont get an advance for fiction you havent written and I like to get my money upfront.

I have spent much time debating internally late at night when I would much rather be sleeping. I have wrestled over what events I would put in this book. Should I include my sexual awakening in gory detail (Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted )? Should I include a series of heartbreaks from friends, lovers and family members? Do I write about my fathers adoption? Do I write about the long line of child abuse that ends with my mother? (This is my next project, so please be patient.) What is mine to tell? All of these things are intrinsic to me, my life and my identity. They are the building blocks of who I am.

But in this instance, I am going to be a tease and not talk about those things at all. This book contains a deep dive into my experiences with education, creativity and neurodiversity. My story is that after an unconventional school route I found myself, against the odds, studying at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. But after failing some exams at the University of Oxford, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia. Not only did I have no clue what those words meant, I had no idea that they could be applied to me. This book is an exploration of that journey and an attempt to understand how on earth I could have slipped through the gaps for the first twenty years of my life.

With this very specific theme, I ought to clarify a few things. Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs) is the general name for a family of differences in learning. It is basically about how the brain processes the world around it. We all have different cognitive profiles, which is to say we each have strengths and weaknesses, but SpLDs are diagnosed by looking at the disparity in those strengths and weaknesses. That is to say: the focus is on the gap.

There are many ways in which we can be neurodivergent: Autism/ASD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Tourettes, Anxiety, ADD/ADHD, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Developmental Language Disorder, to name a handful. I am not going to write long and scientific definitions of each of these; you have Google and there are educational psychologists and individuals with PhD brains who would be horrified by my bastardisation of these complex subjects. I deal in stories and jokes and feelings. But here is my very brief attempt at explaining the SpLDs that feature in this book:

Dyslexia: language and words are tricky and slippy. Dont ask us to spell.

Dyspraxia: space and time is weird. We fall over and have trouble organising.

ADHD: if its boring we need to find something more interesting, and when we do we have laser focus.

Autism: feelings, sounds and the environment can be very intense and hard to translate.

In other words, SpLDs make us see and experience the world in a very different way. This means that we have an incredible arsenal of strengths which include: compassion, creativity, originality and resilience.

Oh, and some names have been changed to protect the guilty (in my eyes) and the innocent (theirs). Everything I have written is true, or at least I believe it is, and so surely that is even more telling than anything else. This is what happened as far as Im concerned; if you think differently write your own book.

My name is spelt wrong, so what chance did I have? Really, my parents were asking for a dyslexic child. And they did it on purpose. My father hadnt got pissed before he went down the baby registry and then forgot what name theyd decided. Its not that theres an ink smudge on the birth certificate and that now has metamorphosed into my name. No, it was an active decision that my name should be spelt wrong.

Kaiya is usually spelt K-A-Y-A (according to Bob Marley), but my young hippy parents (see: naming your child after a Bob Marley song) werent so sure that the numerology of the original spelling was quite good enough for their first progeny. Numerology is a way of placing numerical values on letters which can then be simplified down to a value between one and nine and thus divining what sort of person you might be in the future. Adding an i realigned my stars and gave me a better personality. It made sure I was the sweet baby child I turned out to be. Without that i, the doctor who delivered me wouldnt have proclaimed I was the most beautiful newborn hed ever seen (not bragging just what happened). Without the i, I wouldnt have been the toddler that demanded cups of tea upon waking up every morning. I always slept between my parents and started each day with a cup of sweet milky tea in a little mug with The Lowly Worm on. It was chipped and reassembled and glued because I managed to drop it but was uninterested in any other china. Without the i, I wouldnt have insisted that my hair, too, should be shaved off when my dad cut off his Jesus locks and my mum decided to rock the skinhead. Theyre not spiritual nuts, I swear, despite the head shaving and the occasional kaftan. But as my mum says about the whole numerology thing: why risk it?