Did anyone have a hard time learning to read?

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My mom told me I had some trouble learning to read. Even though I'm pretty sure I have good reading comprehension I still have trouble with reading.
One problem I know is concentration.
Another thing is that I can be reading and not really understand sentences as well I think I'm supposed to. So I can be just reading and getting the theme or gist of what is being said, I think, but not exactly clear of each sentence. Sometimes not understanding, I think.
I talked to my counselor about my reading problems and I think he agreed that it has to do with gestalt thinking or processing. I can't really explain because I don't even understand what the problem, or what I do, exactly.
I was once told I had mild dyslexia but counselor doesn't think that's the main problem.
And even though I've taken tests before which said I had college level reading comprehension I get stuck on individual sentences and try to figure them out then after a while I will get it. I'm still trying to figure this out. I showed someone an example of a sentence I was doing this with and she said it's a problem with reading comprehension.
I'll also take one word literally and can't make any sense because I had the the literal image of the word but that wasn't what was meant in the sentence.
I've been trying to figure this out for a while. I can read but all of these things can make it hard for me to read books even though I love books and have boxes of them. I go through periods where I can't read books.
I can have these problems with books I'm interested in as well.

Also, school was hard and part the reason for that was I sometimes had trouble understanding the questions and finding answers in the books.

Also, in the past when I would post over and over again on this particular topic I was fixated on there's things I'd do to help express my thoughts better such as having remember how other authors put things or use quotes and such.

Very interesting! I consider myself to have good reading comprehension now. I read at a very, very fast past and so does my Mother.

I'm Dyslexic. It took major dedication to learn to read. I had to want to. Fortunately, my mom read to us a lot and that made me want to learn.

I'm now a writer, though I'm not published. I hope to be some day, though.

No. In fact I believe reading helped me to learn to speak in sentences. I only said single words and then suddenly started saying sentences. I believe this is cause once I had a visual it made it so much easier. It's hard for me to get information just listening to someone talk. I always end up just gazing at their face and not hearing a a word they say.

Same pattern for foreign languages. Hearing it spoken gets me nowhere. Too fast to process. Once I have a written symbol for it the sounds become meaningful.

According to my parents, I could read and write when I was 3. To be honest, I don't remember reading or writing anything until I was 5. But most people thought I was a genius, a concept that I always found laughable. Now that I think about it, I was cynical ever since I can remember.

I don't know WHEN I learned to read, but I know it was before 4. Frankly, I was reading some adult books before my school started with the dick and jane books. That was in first grade. People BRAG about reading before 6, and 6 is when first grade starts, so I guess everyone generally starts, OFFICIALLY, in first grade, at least in the US. I found the dick/jane books to be too slow.

But I was ALSO reading, and following, betty crocker books before the age of eight. I still remember in 3rd grade where I would get home and, not having anything to eat, I baked cookies. After all, the stores were miles away, and I didn't have money.

So I don't have any problems with life skills around cleaning, cooking, studying, etc... I guess the only problems I have are SOCIAL.

I'm almost 20 years old and I still can't cook very well. It has to do a lot with my fear of ovens, stoves, ect. I can make ramen noodles, mac n cheese and simple things like that but not much else on the stove. I don't bake at all. I also don't do laundry or anything either.

Well, I remember snippets of my life even going back to when I was a baby, and still crawling. One house I remembered being in was one that I never saw since I was practically a baby until I was like 10 or so, and my mother said, as we passed it, "That's where we lived when you were a baby.". But I DO remember buying a book, and reading at least the sounds, when I was a little past 4yo. And I remember that, at the time, I could read English. The book I bought was spanish, in mexico. I did the same when I was in my twenties in denmark, Germany, Switzerland, etc.... My mother did say I was reading when I was 3yo. And at 5yo, I was finding relatively advanced words in the dictionary. I wish I still had that book. I had it for DECADES. It was a disney comic book. By book though, I mean book, it wasn't the magazine type format many think about.

It IS funny how I remember snippets. One doctor that studies memory says that memorries often get kind of summarized over time. Almost like if you go a LONG time without speaking a foreign language you may always remember you knew it, and remember the basics, but seemingly forget everything else. You may remember anecdotes, but none of the parties involved.