It broke his heart when he became deaf. Very few people stayed in touch with him and an even fewer number would still hang out with him. Learning sign language wasn’t all that difficult. What was indeed difficult was finding someone who actually wanted to communicate with him. He had over 20 friends before he lost his hearing, or so he thought. Only 2 of them cared enough to learn sign language. Naturally his life revolved around those who cared enough to want to communicate with him which included his 2 friends and his parents.
Life without sound was strange. He no longer walked around with headphones. He could no longer listen to the voices of artists who have inspired him. Movies and TV shows were only watchable if there were subtitles. His life became more exhausting as things like crossing the street became more difficult. For the first few days his parents would go up to his room to tell him dinner was ready and he could see tears in their eyes and know that they had been calling from downstairs and then realized why that was no longer of any use.
He was forced to give up playing the violin. An instrument he now wished he spent more time playing. Now instead of listening to music that got him through so much before he had to replay his favorite songs in his head. He had to hold on to them to keep them from fading. He held onto his mother’s voice waking him up and his father’s voice giving him advice. He was going to miss the way his friends laughed at his jokes. He was good with impressions but he didn’t feel comfortable doing them anymore now that he couldn’t hear his own voice.
Life became calm and well, obviously quiet. He spent most of his time reading and writing. He considered learning how to lip read but felt it was a pathetic attempt at a normal life. A life he could no longer have. His favorite sitcoms became lame as he realized it was usually how things were said that made them funny. He spent more time with his 2 friends that learned sign language. He could no longer imagine his life without them. He was eternally grateful to them. Perhaps them sticking around helped keep him going.
It took him a while before he accepted to go and meet people who like him, became deaf. There he met a girl who had lost her hearing too.
She had lost her hearing in a terrible accident. Deafness was the least of her worries as the accident also cost her her parents. She now lived with her aunt’s family while her older brother was away at college. They were nice people but she couldn’t help but feel like a burden as she supposed anyone in her situation would. She wondered if her aunt and brother would blame her for the accident too if they knew what had happened.
They were driving one night and it was raining when she got into an argument with her parents who wanted her to go to law school like her brother so they can both take over their father’s firm in the near future as his doctors advised him to retire in respect to his heart’s condition. She never intended to become a lawyer, not in a million years. She certainly wasn’t interested in following in her father’s footsteps. She always wanted to study English and maybe become a teacher one day.
As the argument got heated her father’s condition worsened and he pulled over and let his wife drive. Her mother was in tears both because of the argument as well as out of fear for her husband and was probably not the best person to take over the wheel. Instead of heading home she opted to stop at the hospital. As she took the highway exit that led to the hospital she spotted a truck that had been parked shortly after the exit a minute too late. She hit the breaks as hard as they let her but the wet street along with the fact that she had been speeding trying to get to the hospital gave the breaks an impossible task.
When she woke up she was told her parents had passed away and that she suffered severe trauma to the head. They told her she was ‘lucky’ to be alive. She found out the truck belonged to a driver who thought driving in the rain wasn’t worth it and stopped for a hot drink at a diner. A truck they would have never encountered if she hadn’t aggravated her father’s condition.
She became isolated afterwards. Her brother couldn’t stay with her long. Law school was demanding. She buried herself in books about everything. She wasn’t depressed really. Her guilt made her angry. She helped her aunt plenty around the house. She also assisted her aunt’s kids with their homework as much as she could. They all learned sign language for her which made her happy but added to her guilt somewhat.
She wasn’t interested in meeting others who had her “condition”. She didn’t know it would help or make her feel less guilty so she never bothered. Even the ones she ran into she didn’t find interesting. All until one day after weeks of her aunt telling her about it she reluctantly agreed to go to a gathering, and there she met a boy.
mycircleofwillis 