Learning What It Means To Be Deaf

Inspired By Silence

When you’ve lived most of your life taking for granted the beautiful things you have heard, going deaf so suddenly will hit you in the face like a sharp punch. You’ll miss your favorite music, of course, but even that isn’t the worst of it. Missing music is a whole lot less painful than living a life in denial. Believing you truly can hear when you obviously cannot. In my moments of weakness, I was on my knees sobbing to God, pleading with Him through hurt and tears to give me back my beautiful sounds. “Why, God, why,” I screamed, not as much as a question, but a demand. I honestly wanted to end my own life because I no longer felt I had a place in this world. I felt my Shepard has purposely lost me and had made no effort to find me.

It wasn’t until my mother got on to her knees one day and through tears, told me the deaf school was where I needed to be. The possibility of shipping me off to a state financed boarding school had been open for some time, but my mother wanted no part of it. She insisted I wasn’t deaf, even then when my hearing had just reached “legally deaf”. Looking back now, I understand my mom’s pain and the sacrifices she made for me, but sending me to deaf school was the most beneficial sacrifice she had ever made for me.

It was there at Oregon School for the Deaf where I learned Sign Language (both English and ASL) so quickly, something many others had tried to teach me for so long with utter failure. It seemed that I couldn’t learn this complicated language until I was in a situation where I had to rely solely upon it. Upon finishing my eighth grade at OSD, I was on the honor roll and received the good citizen award each and every term. At the graduation ceremony where each teacher chooses their most gifted student and presents them with a gift, I was shocked to be a chosen my earth science teacher. A subject I never really cared for, but was apparently gifted in. I learned what it was like for the first time in my life to be looked up to as intellectual. My peers thought so highly of me that I was voted by my class unanimously to represent them in the student knowledge ball. My teachers respected my intelligence to such a length that I was presented with the “Most Gifted Writer” award at the end of my freshman year. Talk was that I would have gotten the award again my sophomore year had I not dropped out. During volleyball season my freshman year, I became the first male manager of an all female team. This was one of my life’s highest highs. Not because I was the only boy in a gym full of sweaty girls, but because they trusted me as a leader to their team, an assistant coach, and simply someone they could trust to talk to during the pre game jitters. Having their trust was a sacred gift to me, one I was honored to hold.

There are so many happy memories I have at OSD. How I learned to read to elementary school students using English Sign Language. How I tutored a misunderstood, intelligent Mexican boy in reading and writing, crossing a barrier of cultures to join each other in one culture, Deaf culture. What I realized at OSD was that God had never forgotten me. He had never stopped presenting me with opportunities to touch others’ lives. But maybe the most important life lesson I learned was that God had never lost me to begin with, it was I who had lost Him and He who had found me again, giving my life a new meaning, a new direction, and ultimately, a new purpose.