Feel Me Out

I looked at the hideous wall covered in paint. That must be the equivalent to a loud sound. So many bright colors clashing and overlapping like they were all in competition with each other and fighting over space. I knew how that felt.  I imagined girls, a little younger than me, perhaps eighteen, fighting over white space to throw their interestingly odd color choices, marking their territory describing why they were brought into life. It was almost over stimulating yet my eyes would not take in anything else. They were fixed like magnets and for a second I was drowning in it. I entered and searched within this picture for some distant form of hope. Maybe someone left something for me behind and my only duty left in life was to find it.  I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and an older gentleman with grey at his temples and a young woman with yards of legs was signing to me that the show was about to begin. With a smile he and his destiny walked ahead and I parkinglotted my thoughts to go off and view the magic. 

Sitting in my seat waiting for the show to begin it was so quiet you could hear hair blowing, but I couldn’t and I missed that. If my hearing were to ever find its way back to me I would cherish it like a mother cherishes their child and hold on to it tightly and never let it out of my sight. I imagine to be deaf is one thing but to have heard and lost that gift is torture. Instead of wallow in self-pity, a stage I had already conquered, I am now at the stage of acceptance. That is what lead me to exhale, put on decent clothes and come down to share space and time with other people in a desperate attempt to feel human again. Poetry always made me feel more real, more human, and more useful.

I used to love to perform my poetry at open mic night on campus. Lisa Gertrude, a famous deaf performer, is going to be signing one of her pieces today. It’s been a long time since I was excited about something. 

Someone tapped me on my shoulder and signed to me… something. Still yet in the early stages of learning to sign I had no idea what she was trying to get across to me and I couldn’t be any worse at lip reading. I took out my notebook with the Eiffel tower etched across the front and scribbled her a purplish message complete with a smiley face, a forced friendly gesture.  I had lost a lot of friends recently I was done shutting people out. 

She jumped over the row, her puffy flower dress parasailing briefly over her head as she landed next to me. The Aquatic and cedar notes in her perfume was a welcomed change from the overstimulating cheap stuff my therapist wore. I looked around to see if anyone else had seen the rambunctious girl’s underwear. She was just a big ole ball of energy. If her energy were an instrument it would be a drum and that drum would be playing a really hyper beat that was difficult to end. Like an unfinished story. Like mine. Like hers. Like life.

We exchanged names and interests, all on my pad and I realized I had a lot in common with Shayla, the overly hyper gymnast who could once hear as well. Both searching for something to define who we now were, both searching for some sort of normalcy in a world that wasn’t normal to us. When the room fell dark she still had my notebook and I was anxious to see what she had written back. I reached for the notebook and Lisa’s overly exaggerated frown and low slanted eyes demanded my attention on stage. 

Suddenly it was just her and I in the room. When her hands reached out open palms she was asking me what I was really afraid of. When she wagged that stance finger, her mouth in a perfectly red painted, o shape she called out my ungratefulness. Her message was clear, be thankful for life or be done with it. Tears stung my eyes, the conversation was too real yet right on time. By the end, her over-amplified frown had transformed into a smile that warmed my entire being. It was a sad pieces and though I didn’t know the words the pain was present, real. Undeniable. Felt like she was telling my story. I cried like a baby applauding her. Shayla gave her a standing ovation.  

When the lights came back on I felt like the tornado had dropped Dorothy back off into Kansas only to find that Oz felt safer, Oz is where I now  belonged. I felt cheated. As people rushed past me I couldn’t break my gaze. I stared down at that brown wooden stage from six rows up in a daze while Shayla scribbled sporadic notes in my journal. Her smile reached the corner of her eyes and all I could think of was how I was on the wrong end of the story. I realized that should be me and Lisa should be here sitting with one of her friends as I told my own story. 

With huge hand gestures and exaggerated leaps across a stage, I could transfer this beast of rage out of my psyche and into the universe and free myself. I could see it. I could see myself up on that stage altering the moods of the audience. Pumping music through the speakers so my audience could see how good music could feel. Signing to some lost girl that in the absence of my hearing I could taste and see my world in new ways. Reaching my palms out to her, lending my smiles out to her, signing to her how lights are brighter and warning signs are still loud. Nodding with eyelashes painted in thick black mascara, letting her know that she has to build the will to overcome, she too can see music, and she too can smell adventure. With twists and flips and eye contact, I could empathize with her. I could see myself telling her that my world too is forever changed but we no longer have to feel captured by our circumstances. With the silence that surrounds us as she watches me on stage, I could let her down gently. I would tell her that clicking her heels together would never ever take her back to the world she once knew and to move forward she would have to accept that as truth. But there would be, could be new friends in Oz.