Disclaimer: This was written in October 2013. No edits have been made to honor the authenticity of this work from when it was written. Some thoughts may be different as this was from eight years ago. I came across this today and thought it’d be nice to share a little bit of background about where I come from. Shout out to my younger self for writing this down.
Living in a Bubble (2013)
What do you think “living in a bubble” means? Is it a metaphor for naivety, or for a barricade between someone and the world? For me, it means many things. The image of one living in a bubble might bring flashbacks of that creative film: “Bubble Boy”, about a boy who was born without an immune system and was forced to live within the boundaries of a literal plastic bubble. As for myself, I sometimes imagine myself as Bubble Girl – since I was born without the ability to hear. However, I wouldn’t call it a negative thing, or something that acts as a barrier from the real world and myself. In fact, I have grown up as a deaf girl who felt like she had a superpower being able to tune out all the chaotic sounds in the world. While my family would groan and complain about their headaches from my baby cousins wailing, or from being stuck in a huge crowd at an amusement park, I stood smiling, completely oblivious to the sources of their despair. Being deaf has truly defined me as Brianna Celeste Keogh, the girl who can do anything but hear.
A small town in Michigan, in a house with the entire forest as its backyard, was my home where I lived in as a small child. Beneath a window glazed with the reflection of sunshine, there laid a baby girl gazing into a mirror that stood against the wall. She sucked her thumb, her chubby legs playfully rising up and down, as her eyes lay stuck to the vision of a reflection. What she saw was a door, slightly ajar, where she knew her mommy would come from. Every time her mother entered the room, the baby girl would see it in the mirror and turn to look. When her mother picked her up and nestled her daughter close to her, the small girl watched her, observing the different shapes and colors on her face. Her mother’s lips would move, and from that came a strange vibration that happened to be comforting to the baby, and that made her giggle. The vibration would be abrupt and short, or long and soothing. This was my mother’s voice, and my reaction was not to her voice, but to the vibration that I felt on her neck. One day, as the baby and her parents went to a picnic on a warm summer afternoon, the little girl, now just starting to be able to jump and waddle about, ran off chasing a pigeon. She went dangerously close to the street, so her mother yelled out her name. “Brianna! Come here! BRIANNA!” but the little girl didn’t show any reaction to her mother’s voice. Worried, her mother got up, and ran after her daughter, continuing to call out her name. She then grabbed the little girl’s shoulder to keep her away from an approaching car, and the girl violently shuddered, twisting her head quickly, startled. This was the day my mother realized that I was deaf.
Every year, thousands of parents are stunned by the information that their beloved child is deaf. Those stunned parents are hearing. People who have grown up communicating through their voice and hearing sounds through their ears, and think of it as the most normal thing in the world. They never met a deaf person in their life, and didn’t find it necessary to, not until that moment they heard the words “Your child can’t hear”. My mother and father were young, new and awkward at being parents. The news that their precious baby was deaf was a huge shock. The way that they handled it separates them from many hearing parents; they respectfully accepted my deafness and remained determined to provide me with the best possible education so that I would have a wonderful life no different from any other kid’s. Their determination for me to have a regular reading level for my age and have a successful future was vital to my ability to read and write today. Pieces of paper were taped all over the house to label every object you could think of: the dog, the bed, the wall, a chair, and even the refrigerator! This helped me see that each object was identified by a different word. With this exposure, my ASL and reading skills both boomed simultaneously. I entered pre-school when I was 18 months old, and was reading on my own by the time I was 4 years old. I was at a mainstream school with deaf programs available, but my pre-school teacher noticed my fast progress and decided that being with the hearing kids would be a more suitable environment for me. Unfortunately, this is because many of these kids were language deprived as their parents did not sign at home and this delayed their language acquisition. After that, I remained being the only deaf kid in my class until seventh grade, when I moved to a school for the deaf. Today, as a high school senior, I read above 12th reading level, and feel confident with my abilities to write and read English and sign American Sign Language. I see that the combination of a strong English foundation, from reading books and signing with my parents, and daily use of ASL with my friends, from my experience in a deaf school for four years, has helped me enormously into being a strong communicator. My understanding of what I learn is boosted with the visual aspects of sign language, and I feel that I wouldn’t learn as well without the help of ASL. Overall, the application of two languages in my life plays a big part in my life.
My lens shift from left to right as hundreds of mixtures of green, red, and blue capture my attention. The exquisiteness of things has constantly been a highlight of my life, as silence allows me to truly value the essence of beauty in everything. Ever since I can remember, the sensation of being silent, gazing at a leaf drift to the ground, or simply the stillness of a room, was always inspiring to me. I watch the behavior of people, the way nature acts, the comical acts of cartoons on television, the glory of hidden universes found in books. The silence in my world is not a scary hole of nothingness—it is a secret escape to a whole new universe made up of dazzling colors, stars, light… and utter, happy, blissful harmony of my dreaming mind and the pure calm that exists around me. I am aware that there is so much chaos that occurs every single moment, and that there are cries, screams and other horrific sounds that scar the air, and that life can be very, very disappointing. But, I am able to get further away from that than most people. I can stand, in a flood of bodies in the middle of a busy street, with people chattering on the phone, high heels tapping, taxicabs screeching to a stop, an ambulance wailing, and hear absolutely nothing. The feeling of irritation that I get is from the visuals I have–an unflattering blend of colors flying by, people’s faces getting too close, whirs of cars driving past and continuous flashes of headlights.
My ways of living may be different than what most people are used to, but this world is not a world where everyone is exactly the same. My deafness and strong use of ASL adds to the variety of this world. I live in a bubble, a bubble that expands and stretches with no limit. This bubble is filled with creativity, knowledge, illusions, memories, dreams, feelings, and thoughts. I am aware of the sounds that exist in the world, but I am grateful that I do not know what they sound like. I have grown into an independent, humble young woman, and I wouldn’t be who I am today if I weren’t deaf.