My husband took one look at my art and asked if I was okay

My husband took one look at my art, and I laughed because I knew that piece would make him uncomfortable. That was sort of the point, even if I couldn't have told you that while I was making it.

I made a few pieces this week that were completely out of character for me. This is the one that stopped him.

I pulled two faces out of modern fashion magazines and blended them.

The first was a pretty woman in a white dress, Victorian inspired, curly blonde hair. Polished. Composed. The kind of image a magazine builds specifically so you'll want to be her.

Then I removed most of her face.

In its place I put a second woman, her face buried under heavy white greasepaint, mouth and eyes drawn on huge in thick black. A performer's face. A face designed to be read from across a room.

Then I did the part I still can't fully explain. I took the eye from the cutout face and set it back into the painted face.

So she's looking out from behind it.

I've been thinking about it ever since.

I had to work backward to figure out why

My process is intuitive. I don't plan a piece and then execute it. Images pull at me and I follow them, and the meaning shows up later, sometimes months later.

So when something comes out this far outside my usual range, I have to sit with it and ask what I was actually working on.

This time I knew. It just took me a few days to admit it.

The doom scroll that wrecked my week

Last week I was scrolling late at night, the way you do when you should be asleep, and I came across a list of dyslexia symptoms.

I've suspected I was dyslexic for years. Never did anything about it.

There was a screening quiz attached, so on a whim I took it. Ten questions. I checked nine.

I sat there and had the kind of aha moment that rearranges things behind you rather than in front of you.

Vindicated and furious at the same time

Suddenly a lot of things made sense. Not just the reading. Other difficulties I've carried my whole life that I never connected to anything.

And then the anger showed up.

I was an average student. Report card time meant getting torn into. I remember that feeling exactly, sitting there while somebody explained to me that I wasn't applying myself.

I wasn't stupid. I needed help with something that was completely outside my control, and nobody looked for it.

I keep running the alternate version. How different would my life have been if somebody had caught this when I was eight.

I don't have an answer. I just keep running it.

Then I looked at the piece again

A presentable woman with her face mostly removed. A painted face put on in its place, the mouth and eyes exaggerated the way you exaggerate an expression when you need people to read it from a distance and get it right.

And her real eye, still looking out from underneath the mask.

I made that before I understood any of this. Or I thought I did.

Masking. That's the word for it, and I didn't have the word when I picked up the scissors.

So do I go get tested?

Here's where I'm at, and I'm genuinely unsure about it.

I'm not far from retirement. I am, in fact, counting the days. So what would a formal diagnosis actually do for me at this point? Accommodations for a career I'm nearly done with?

I've never liked labels. Would I have to start calling myself dyslexic? Do I tell people? Does any of it matter now?

Expensive testing to confirm something I already know, so I can put a word on it, feels like paying for a receipt.

I'd rather work out my own shit through my own art therapy. Which, apparently, is exactly what I was doing this week without realizing it.

Maybe that's the whole answer. The art knew before I did. It usually does.

Your turn

If you have dyslexia or another learning disorder that got caught late, I want to hear from you.

Did getting an official diagnosis change anything for you? Was it worth it? Did you tell people, or keep it to yourself?

I'm asking sincerely. I haven't decided anything.