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Summary: In painstaking detail, Abeel recounts her life, from kindergarten through college, with a learning disability that compromises her ability to learn skills based on sequential processing--especially math, spelling, and grammar. She writes frankly about her mental and emotional struggles to cope; while she looked like a "normal" child, she was unable to tell time, count change, or remember her locker combination. After her disability was diagnosed, halfway through her story when she was in seventh grade, the school system provided both special and gifted classes that helped her. But still aching over missed social opportunities and suffering from panic attacks, she turned to writing, which became her life preserver. Upon college graduation, Abeel finally accepted that being learning disabled wasn't her fault.
