It's My Life

Being deaf, along with many other things, has its advantages and its disadvantages.
I can literally "tune out".
I sleep in peace every single night.
Loud music does not hurt my eyes.

However, if a fire alarm goes off during sleep or a shower, I am sort of screwed if someone does not save me. 
I can be the brunt of jokes.
It can be hard to follow a conversation in a loud area.

Despite all of this, I would never give up being deaf for anything. It is my life, and has become an essential aspect of who I am and how I got here.

I would like to give a shoutout to Sam Anderson, in her blog They Just Say It Better, in the link http://theyjustsayitbetter.blogspot.com.  This blog takes songs and describes them in order to bring a light to someone's day.  I really like what she did here in this blog, and it is what I hope to do with my life. I would hope that I can do what Sam did each week in her blog, and bring meaning to someone's life with everyone that I interact with.

Silence

Silence.
A world of nothing.
It's a sea of faces,
Lips moving, but no sound erupting.
My head turns round and round,
Trying to make sense of it all.
The silence is so loud, it's deafening.
I snap my fingers by my ears, 
Desperately trying to grasp any whisper at all.

Looking at the doctor,
She puts a contraption in my ear.
I sit there, confused.
She begins to fiddle on the computer.
Suddenly, soft sounds begin to fill my ears.
The radiator running,
The rain on the roof,
And I am amazed.

I walk down the street,
Head held high.
Suddenly all the lips moving have meaning.
I raise my hands to the sky,
Proclaiming "Thank You God For Sound."

How far is too far?

Most days, I am in a good mood, and do not have much that can bring me down.
Many people often times do not know if they can ask about my cochlear implant, because with some people, it is a sensitive subject.
I have found that if I lightly joke about my deafness, it makes people feel a lot more at ease about asking me about it.
What can feel a little bit offensive is when people get too comfortable with it, and make fun of it every second.  When this happens, it just causes me to become quiet and withdrawn, knowing that anything else I say will only become fuel for them.
Sometimes, I get the guts to say that they went too far.  But most times, I can not do this.
Many of my closer friends will be in my defense, and stand up for me.
This is something I need to learn to be able to do for myself.
I love answering peoples' questions about my life as a deaf kid, and will gladly answer them.