The thrill of hearing my husband say 'I love you' after a decade of silence: How one

Smithtr

Smithtr

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My hands were shaking as I dialled my husband's number. It had, after all, been almost ten years since I'd last heard Tom's voice.

'Hello Sophie,' he said, sounding just as he had the first time we met, at a party in 2000. We both started to laugh with joy, so loudly that I nearly missed hearing him say: 'I love you.'

Those words usually passed between us in sign language. I had been profoundly deaf for several years, and we had come to rely on signing to communicate.

Tom's voice wasn't the only sound I'd missed desperately in that time. I missed hearing my dad play his violin, the splashing of water in a shower, even hearing myself sing.

I could hear when I was born but began to go deaf in my teens. As I approached my 40th birthday last summer, I was somewhere between profoundly and totally deaf.

But the flick of a techno-switch on the cochlear implant fitted in my skull finally transported me back to a lost world; a place where cats purred, sirens screeched and pebbles clinked on the beach.

Although my deafness is genetic and runs through generations of my family, in my 20s I remained in denial. I had a degree, friends, boyfriends and a career as a journalist, scriptwriter and actress. Audiology tests were an advance warning but I refused hearing aids; I just wanted someone to turn up the volume.

By my late-20s, denial had turned to despair. Like all deafened people I would bluff when I couldn't hear and swiftly change the subject of conversations I couldn't follow.

As a journalist, I was winging my way through interviews with a tape recorder customised for my failing ears. At night I performed my own material in nightclubs, and at literary events that were noisy I reckoned no one else could hear much either.
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Deaf writer Sophie Woolley's cochlear implant regained her hearing | Mail Online
 
Touching. Finally to be able to hear once again...though no perfect. Better than nothing.
 
Every time I see the title of this post, what pops into my head is a totally different story. I did read the actual story, and I know this is alldeaf where the issue of whether or not a person can hear comes into play in lots of posts.

And yet.

Ever time I see this thing, the scenario that my brain conjures is something like:

"We got married 25 years ago and we were so happy at first. Then he just got mean. He'd come home from work and want his beer and sports on TV and never said a nice word to me. He'd snap at me if the house wasn't perfect, and would make fun of me, put me down in front of our friends. He just turned into this cold, abusive monster. I thought about divorcing him, I thought about killing him, but I don't know, I'm always so tired. I just ended up getting through one day after another, honestly getting pretty worn down, kind of like living in a long, sad nightmare. Then one day there was an accident at work, he got hit in the head with a big heavy pipe, was knocked out and taken to the hospital. When he came to, I don't know how, but he was that man I married again. Loving, sensitive, appreciates me, all that. I hope he doesn't change again. Maybe he will, I don't know. I think I'd better call at his work and make sure they don't get rid of that pipe."
 
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