“My parents didn’t know much about deafness. They were young. They were adjusting to life in America. And they barely spoke English, so they had no way of advocating for me. I didn’t get my first hearing aids until elementary school. And those helped a lot, but they didn’t actually restore my hearing, they just amplified sound. It could be hard to pinpoint voices. And I still had to read lips, so I was constantly asking people to talk slower. It was exhausting. And I felt like a burden, like I was constantly pushing my disability on other people. Eventually I just stopped trying to engage, which came with its own set of problems. I developed a reputation as someone who never spoke. I got bullied quite a bit. The majority of my social interaction came from my older brother Brian. It was just a typical sibling relationship. We annoyed each other, and got in fights. I envied how easily he made friends at school. But he always made a point of saying ‘hi’ to me in the hallway. He’d even scream it sometimes. And that meant so much to me. Because people could see, that even if I didn’t mean much to them, I was important to somebody. After school Brian and I would watch a lot of TV together. It was a safe space for me. He was the one person that I never had to ask to turn on subtitles. There was no obligation to socialize, or interact, or anything else I struggled with. We’d just sit there. And be together. Maybe it didn’t mean much to him, because he had so many friends. But it meant a lot to me. Both of us are grown now. We’ve matured a lot. And we understand each other better. Not long ago my dog passed away, and it was so hard for me. She’d been with me for fifteen years. I’d leaned on her so much. And that first week I couldn’t bear to be alone. I went into Brian’s room and just plopped down on his spare bed. He didn’t say a word. He just turned on The Office and switched on the subtitles. He left it playing for the entire week. It was his way of being there for me. We didn’t speak much. We just watched the show together. But it was my way of silently telling him that I needed somebody. And his way of silently telling me that he understood.”
izzy806
stormborns
blakekathryn
discoholicmusic
ellievsbear
