reflections

Today I realized that it is nearly a month and 22 days away from the two year anniversary of getting my implant. So much has happened in that 2 years, much more than in the combined 20 years of my life.

The other day, I received a video from my grandpa, one showing of my childhood, at least up until I was about 2 years old. I watched it and became obsessed with the fact that all of the signs were right there that I was deaf. I cried maybe once in the entire video, and I started to notice that I only made sounds when people were baby-talking to me, where I was just trying to mimic their mouth movements. The entire video I was screaming inside, shocked at how oblivious everyone was to me being so quiet. I guess I was an angel child, but even so just figure it out sooner that I am deaf! I was diagnosed for the first time at 22 months. Hearing aids by the time I was two, and I was terrible with them.

My childhood was different, where as soon as I was diagnosed as deaf, my parents focused on me. Now this meant that my brother was forgotten about. Years later, this is my mother's one regret about our childhood, that she forgot about my brother. My brother is older than me and he is the most brilliant man if he uses his wits and skills well. I can only say how proud of what he has done so far, and wish that he would realize his potential sooner, especially since he is a struggling artist fresh out of college. Even at 5 years old, you could tell that he was going to be something someday, where he just was full of knowledge and desire to do these things in life. At least I am glad that he has finally conquered his fear and his dream of going to Morocco last week, and I hope he continues on this path of conquering his dream, India next?

I'm writing this post mainly because I started thinking about how I would like to write a memoir someday, and I've gotten many feedbacks from people on my travel blog, saying how they love reading it. It's a funny thing, how writing can be good and bad. All through my academic life, I have struggled with writing papers and formally, but when it comes to writing my blogs, it just flows and it works. I love writing informally. Because of this love, I've toyed with the ideas of writing a memoir or even writing for a newspaper, doing my own column. But then again, I remember that I am nowhere near trained in that kind of stuff, and I should focus on my own major... Then again, who ends up working in their major from college? Only engineers I find. I just want a job where I am happy doing what I am doing. Happiness is the only thing that matters to me.

A few weeks back, I was actually contacted by a woman who goes to my aunt's church, and she just had twin babies recently. One of the twin is deaf due to meningitis, and she had talked to my mother already on the phone a few times about raising a deaf child. Eventually I told my mother to give her my email address so I can give her a perspective. I actually just emailed her back now since I realized that I never emailed her back! April certainly was a busy month for me after all.

I've run out of the brain flow for now, but I'll get back into updating this more often hopefully.
Until then,
-Annie