Julkalender

"Nothing," I thought to myself. 

I couldn't hear a thing. What was wrong with me? I sighed and sat down on the chair my mother held out for me. I looked at her and smiled softly. She smiled back, and tried to look happy, but nothing could hide the blame on her face. I wanted to tell her that it was alright. I wanted to tell her I wasn't angry at her. No one was angry. But she was. And I coudlnt' say anything to make it better. No, because I had no voice. 

For a month I felt sick. Really sick. I had headaches all the time, and threw up every two seconds. And that was only the beginning. Soon I started to sweat heavily and faint every time I stood up from a chair or bed. Until then, my mom believed it was only a fever. But it was so much more. And infection had started, somewhere in my head, and was spreading. So we got to the hospital to late. There was nothing left that they could do. They examined me, with cold hands and pointy shots, and told us that they could only make the pain, fainting and vomiting disappear, but not the infection. It had spread to far. My mom started crying and my dad just sat there, and said nothing. 

I was the only one who could ask them. 

"Is.. is it lethal?" I whispered. 

The doctor smiled at me and tried to ensure me that it wasn't. Though it had one effect. I would, soon, lose my hearing and my voice. That was the result. 

I was fourtheen, going deaf and dumb. That was were my mom started blaming herself. My dad still said nothing. Was it he who had lost his voice? 

No, he certainly still had his voice. He proved that to us later that day. 

I had never seen anyone so angry before. He yelled at her and she only cried. My parents, screaming and crying in front of me, while I sat there, and felt as though I had already lost my voice. 

How I wished I could forget their screaming. How was I to know, that just a week later, my hearing would disappear, soon followed by my voice. Now, their screaming was all I could hear. Over and over again, like a record player in my head. Of course he didn't really blame her. We all knew that. He was just scared. But my mother took all his words in, and belived in them. But they would soon realise that they had to fitght together, if we were to make it. 

They would learn sign language, so that they could talk to me, they would smile and be happy with their deaf and dumb daugther.

Because that was life. 

But me? 

How about me? 

I couldn't hear a thing. I was completely surrounded by silence, and it scared me. 

A tear fell from my cheek. I didn't want my mother to see it, so I turned my head, pretending to examine my left hand. It was shaking. I quickly put it in my pocket, after wiping the tear away. Then I turned to face her. She signed 'food' and I smiled. 

Yes, I was hungry, I told her while nodding. 

She smiled back at me and took my hand, walking me to the kitchen. 

I screamed. I screamed my heart out, but not a sound left my lips. Inside my head I heard my screaming, but no one else did. I took the closest object, and trew it away. It smashed into the wall and the little porcelain pig exploaded into a million pieces. 

It must have sounded really bad, because even though I couldn't hear it, soon my mother was in front of me with a worried look on her face. I showed my record player into her arms, and hit the play button. Then I turned the volume up, and she handed it back to me, and put her hands over her ears. I paused the CD and opened the lid. Marilyn Manson. Oh, how I missed him. I dropped the CD player on the floor and sat down in a chair. Threw the CD away, and it joined the broken pig. 

How could I live without music? The tears were running down my face now, and I didn't stop them. Didn't want to. In that moment I hated my mother, father and the doctors. 

I just wanted to be normal. 

I reached out for a pen and paper and scribbled down: 

"I miss listening to music," 

"I miss singing," I continued. 

"I miss screaming," 

"I miss talking," 

"I miss the sound of the ocean," 

Throughout the years that list grew, and grew and grew. 

Suddenly I was twenty-one years and that list was safely hidden away under my bed. 30 sheets of paper, full of things that I missed. Full of things I would never be able to do or hear or say again. It hurt me, real bad, and even though I had learned to live with it now, I was still scared most of the time. Really scared. 

But the rest of the time, I found myself really enjoying this. One thing I had learned was to read lips, and that was so fun. I could sit on a bench in the park with a binocular, spying on everyine around me. I had not yet explained this to my parents, so we still used sign language amonst the family. But I had seen them talk about it. I could be reading a book in the garden, and they sat close by arguing. I shot them glances now and then and was able to keep track, and understand what they were saying. Sometimes it was just ordinary stuff, but other times, when I had it extra hard, and cried very often, there was screaming. 

It could start with me telling them I missed my music so much, and it wouldn't end until my father was screaming and his skin turned read, and my mom was crying and screaming back. 

They thought I didn't notice. Sure, I couldn't hear them, but what I read from their lips was more than enought. Dad still blamed mom, even though I had hoped he wouldn't. I always thought he would realize it was no ones fault, but no sir. He clung to that blame, and refused to listen to me or mom. 

He blamed his wife for making his daughter deaf and dumb. I knew she didn't leave him, even though she wanted to, because of me. She didn't want to break the family apart. She didn't want me to blame myself for that. But the family was broken. The sickness had poisoned the family, until there was nothing left but despair, and ther was nothing she could do, to stop me from blaming myself.