According to everyone I meet, I can speak like a hearing person. Occasionally my words have a hint of an accent. Other than that, it's "perfect."
Oh, good. Thanks, but no thanks.
Fourteen years of intense speech and aural-verbal training is in the toliet and I'm flushing it. Round and round the water goes down.
Speech never helped me. It made other people's lives easier. The more I learned how to speak, the more I became isolated from the world. I could tell people my feelings, thoughts, needs, and wants. But no one stopped to consider...I wanted to know their feelings, thoughts, needs, and wants, too. I learned to speak...but no one listened. I learned to listen...but no one would look at me. And I learned to cry...and no one heard me.
My childhood memories such as Thanksgiving and Christmas memories are so painful that I block myself from remembering. Those moments at the dinner table where I'm sitting there, laughing along (and wondering what was so funny?)...while inside I was hurting. I resented, and still resent, my family...especially my mother. I missed out. So who gives a damn that I can say the words out of my mouth? Especially when I could never really speak my mind.
People say if I learn to speak, then I'll be ready for the hearing world. How ironic is it that because I learned to speak that the hearing world became unreachable. It was not until I was able to use American Sign Language again that I was able to be fully part of the world. It was then I was able to really speak my mind.
Yeah, I can speak. Thanks, but no thanks.
Thread re-opened.