My tongue used to be broken, to be precise, it was bitten off by myself halfway.
That was probably when I was one or two years old. I was bouncing on the sofa with my mouth open, and then "snap," I fell off the sofa and bit off my own tongue. I was taken to the hospital and had to get ten or twenty stitches to save my life. Later, my tongue successfully grew back, and my sense of taste was not greatly affected. It can be considered fortunate in an unfortunate situation.
Although my tongue grew back and my sense of taste was not affected, my tongue is no longer as agile, and rolling my tongue is not as natural.
When I was learning pinyin in elementary school, I had a hard time making retroflex sounds, and I also had difficulty distinguishing between flat and retroflex pinyin when spelling. My mother would hold me and make me read and spell over and over again, but I still struggled to spell the correct pinyin, and in the end, she gave up. Since then, I have never been able to distinguish between flat and retroflex sounds, even until now.
Because I can't distinguish between flat and retroflex sounds, I always have my input method set to fuzzy pinyin. You could even say that if I turn off fuzzy pinyin, I wouldn't be able to type. There was a time when I tried to force myself to turn off fuzzy pinyin, and it was a painful period. I often had to type twice (once with a flat tongue sound and once with a retroflex tongue sound). But then I gave up. Fuzzy pinyin is still usable, so why bother torturing myself? You could say that I gave up on distinguishing between flat and retroflex sounds, or you could say that I accepted the reality that I can't distinguish between flat and retroflex sounds.
Maybe at that time, we thought that we could change the problem of not being able to distinguish between flat and retroflex sounds through hard work, but in reality, there are many things that cannot be changed through hard work. If you can't roll your tongue, how can you accurately produce retroflex sounds? If you can't produce retroflex sounds, how can you distinguish between the difference in pronunciation of Chinese characters? This is the reality we need to accept. We have to accept that humans are not omnipotent, and subjective willpower cannot change everything.
In the past two years, my tongue has become increasingly stiff. Every time I try to roll my tongue, I feel a sour pain at the base of my tongue, and this pain sometimes spreads to the roots of my teeth. This often happens after I have spoken a lot, and the base of my tongue and the roots of my teeth will be in prolonged pain, which is very uncomfortable. This discomfort also intensifies my tics and plunges my mind into complete chaos.
Of course, I have also found a good way to solve this problem, which is to shift my attention, for example: playing an exciting tavern battle flag (x). But this approach has a fatal flaw. If I don't enjoy it, it will actually worsen the symptoms.
I don't know if my frequent illnesses and low resistance are due to my tongue being broken in the past. I also don't know if in the future, my tongue will completely lose its ability to roll. I hope that in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, everything will be fine.