My first post on /r/Stutter. I'm 23 yo and have stuttered for as long as I remember. Despite that, I have lived a pretty normal life - I have many friends, I am socially active, I have a beautiful girlfriend (and had several before her), and so on. Still, there are those situations where stuttering is not exactly handy. Presentations or job interviews come to mind as the *biggest*, but minor things like stuttering when asking for a coffee are probably most upsetting to me. I never paid much attention to my stuttering, in the sense that I never made a big deal out of it. Around my 18th birthday this suddenly changed, as I became more aware (?) of things, and stuttering gained importance. But I kept on my route. I do feel that it has been getting somewhat worse, so I've recently looked for help and will soon start some speech therapy. Let's hope that works for the best. To conclude, what I mean is that stuttering is bad, of course (no one chooses stuttering over speech fluency), but... some things are way worse than that. It's part of who we are and, as long as we build up the necessary confidence to deal with it, we're good. In fact, most people will understand our *problem* and will even be helpful. So, be strong and confident. People are not as judgmental on this as one might expect. Great you managed that, OP. EDIT: Just wanted to add something - if you manage to deal with your stuttering, so will other people, specially the people that are closer to you. When I REALLY stutter, my friends and I will even laugh over that. And, obviously, they're not making fun of me, it's just that... it's somewhat funny. But they're there for me, no matter what. And I know that, if someone made fun of me in their presence (never happened, all my life), they'd probably punch the person right there.