麻豆

鈥淣o Sound鈥�

By Emily Hernandez

For as long as I can remember, sounds were never what they appeared to be. Being deaf meant that I had to create new ways to find my entertainment. Everyone else was able to customize their lives to sound. People got to pick what their morning alarms sounded like, what songs they liked best, and even how loud they wanted to hear things. I never liked how people always took sound for granted. They had something I could never dream of having. Without sound, all that was left were the words. The English alphabet contains twenty-six letters, and I learned very quickly just how powerful each letter was.

After realizing sound wasn’t going to do much for me, I thought trying physical activities would be best for me. My thought was that I didn’t need sound to hit a ball. While that is technically true, sports would never be an option for me. My audiologist told me that with my unique condition, sports wouldn’t be safe for me. You see, I don’t have complete hearing loss, it’s actually partial. I was born completely deaf in my left ear and partially deaf in my right ear. Due to this, my hearing loss wasn’t discovered until I started going to school. I was told that my hearing was a precious thing that needed to be protected. If I was to be hit in the head by such force, I would lose my hearing permanently. That small bit I have left would be gone forever, and I’d be left in silence.

Since sports were no longer an option, I was determined to find out what was left for me. Being such a young kid meant that any small activity could keep me busy, but I wanted a small activity to call my own. I’m a very shy person, so I wanted something that wouldn’t require much socialization. I tried arts and crafts, but I didn’t think I was any good. I felt that arts and crafts were too messy. I needed something simple. Eventually I found out just how powerful the English alphabet really is.

I had to have been around seven when I first willingly picked up a book for my own entertainment. I can’t even remember what book was titled, but I remember what it was about, and I remember how I felt when reading. I was so engaged in what the words were describing. I loved the way the story was developing. Call me sappy and basic, but the book was a romance novel. There was something about the idea of falling in love with the person who truly understands you that felt so powerful and alluring to a younger me. With each word, I wanted to learn more. I remember reading and reading until I finished the book. I was left in shock. This was the first time I had stayed in a spot for hours to read. I had read books before, but this was different. I think it was the story that really drew my attention. The way the characters connected really drew me in, and I wanted to find and experience a feeling that felt so hopeful. I was a little girl, and my head was always in the clouds thinking of fairytale stories. Then and there is when my love for reading developed.

Over the next few years I would spend all of my time reading. I would read after school, during school, before bed, when I went out with family, and especially when I was on my own. Reading also gave me friends. Albeit they weren’t real people, but I connected with the characters so much that I felt they were real. Each storyline and character was so unique that I would look forward to getting the free time to read. Growing up with hearing loss made me feel as an outsider. I was seen as quiet. Even though I was a quiet kid, I didn’t like the label. Despite what others thought of me, I continued to be myself. I was always seen as the girl with the book, and I loved it. I wouldn’t be me without the stories I’ve read.

Reading also kept me sane when I was in the hospital. Hearing loss isn’t a one and done deal. There are so many different factors that occur due to hearing loss. I spent the majority of my childhood in and out of the hospital getting my ear tubes replaced. From the ages of three years old to fourteen years old I would go in and out of the hospital for many small procedures. Not being allowed visitors was hard, and not being allowed to do extraneous activities was even harder. I didn't just lose my hearing, I feel like I lost a bit of my life. Being in the hospital while everyone else was going on about their days was really depressing. All I had to do was read books, and I was more than okay with that. I read in the hospitals, I read during doctors’ visits, and I even read while doing recovery time at home. Reading made me feel like I was living hundreds of lives all in one, and it gave me a sense of home.

As I got older, my imagination grew. I wasn’t tired of reading stories, but I wanted one of my own. I know I’m too anti-social to go out and create something with my life, so I started writing. Writing gave me a new purpose. My love for the romance genre grew. When you get older, you view love differently, so I wanted to showcase that in my writing. When I was writing, there were no guidelines. I could write what I wanted, and I could choose what I wrote about. At first I started writing while I read. I would write how I felt about certain chapters, and I would sometimes even write different endings and scenarios for the characters. Eventually I started to create characters and scenarios of my own. It wasn’t even short stories that I was writing. I started to write poems about a feeling I had, I started writing letters directed towards the people in my life, and I even kept a diary at one point to help organize my daily routine.

I’m very insecure when it comes to my creative writing, so I never shared them with anyone, and I never will. I’m okay with that, because my writing is for me only. I love the
characters I have created and the expressions I’ve written, they each represent a part of me. My writing is a form of expression. Writing was another way for me to let loose, because just like reading, my writings would take up hours of my day. I do it for fun, and I never take it seriously. However, I didn’t realize how much of an effect that my writing had on my life until I started writing papers in high school.

The year before I went to high school, my life completely changed. The small amount of hearing abilities I had left in my right was rapidly deteriorating, and my audiologist was becoming concerned. That made me eligible for cochlear implant surgery. A cochlear implant is essentially a two-part device that creates words from sound waves. The internal piece is what requires surgery. The implant is a large magnet that is placed under the skin and it has a string of wires that wraps around a person’s cochlear. The outer piece is called a processor. The processor is worn on top of the ear with an attachment piece that connects to the implant’s magnet. Sound waves are picked up by the processor’s microphone, and the wires in the implant send electrodes of those sound waves to my brain that then decode it into words. That is how I’m able to hear. Despite the fact that my right ear was deteriorating, I received the cochlear implant in my left ear. My right ear was just given a hearing aid. With the ability to now have sound, I never strayed away from the person I was before sound. With my newfound hearing, I struggled to grasp the concept of how sound worked and I needed to find ways to cope with the drastic change. This is when I started to really write poems. I’d write haiku’s and sonnets, because it gave me a structure and guidelines to follow. I’d mainly write about how each day went, or I’d write about a new sound I had heard for the first time. These poems really helped me with my paragraph structure when it came to writing papers in high school.

High school was a life experience I never expected. Since no one knew of my hearing loss, it felt like a fresh start. I could start new and make a more vibrant name for myself. Unfortunately, my quiet and nerdy stereotype quickly fell back into place. I didn’t mind though, because I had my writings and my books. I feel that a person who spends their time reading and writing grows to become a person whose curiosity is expanded. My curiosity greatly expanded, and so did my need to learn more about what my mind was trying to process. I absolutely loved to learn about so many different things in high school. Simple and short answers weren’t enough for me, because I knew that there was much more depth to final answers. My reading and writing hobbies also gave me structure. I would be so punctual with my responses, and my writing prompts would be over a paragraph long. I went above and beyond in my work, because the ideas would just naturally flow with ease. My teachers took notice of this, and eventually I became known as “humbly gifted”. I was smart enough to be above average, but I was too stupid for the IB kids. Despite getting into the IB program, I turned it down. I know that I’m smart, but I feel like I’m not deserving of being part of a sophisticated posse. Classmates always came to me for homework help, but they knew I would never outright give away answers. I was always one to teach what I learned, because my reading and writing skills were able to help me articulate words for others to understand. I wanted a high school career without added stress. Due to my writing skills, I had minimal stress when doing assignments. Due to my reading skills, I had great excitement when doing assignments.

All of the reading and writing that I did in my early years paid off greatly. My vocabulary expanded, and my way of writing was so proper that I could come up with answers to things I didn’t even know about. I could do little research on a topic and still get an A+ on it because of my way of writing. I could have no understanding of what I was trying to elaborate on, but I was always able to get my point across. All of the grades I got made me even more determined to keep up with my writing and reading. I continued those hobbies for fun, and the more I did, the more it reflected wonderfully on my grades. I also feel like it affected me negatively. Since writing is now an easy thing for me to do, many of my writing assignments are the result of procrastination. I started to do my writing assignments the day before their submission date, and I was okay with that because my grade always ended up being in the high nineties.

Reading and writing are a huge part of who I am today, but I don’t think I would have even discovered just how important they are to me if I had sound. Sound is a beautiful thing I’ll never get to fully experience, and I’ve grown to accept that. I’m okay without sound, because I have my books and my writings. I’d rather live a life with words than live a life with sound. Creating worlds and reading about them is much better than having to live in the chaos of this one anyways. Besides, without my hearing loss, I don’t think my love for reading and writing would exist.