Kate's Cochlear Implant

I turned 30 years old this week.

A real milestone for me.

It has caused me to reflect back on my life over the past few years …

I was thinking about how this blog has been exceptionally positive. When I started it in June last year, I actually thought it might be quite sad in tone, or dramatic. It has surprised me how very positive everything has been, how positive I have felt.

I had a very hard time when I was a teenager, and in my early 20s. Many people don’t realise just how difficult deafness can be. It is a hidden disability, an isolating disability, because it is one of communication.

I was in bed a few minutes ago, trying to sleep, but turning all my life events over in my head, thinking about the journey that has brought me here. It’s 4.45am now, and as always I think the best way to cure insomnia is to get up and write about what’s keeping me up! Once I get it out, I’ll sleep well again.

Sometimes I just can’t believe that I considered suicide.

When I was 21, all the difficulties associated with my deafness came to a head, and I decided to kill myself.

I had struggled with university. I didn’t know any other people who were deaf, and I didn’t identify with any deaf people. No one understood what I had been going through. I was too anxious and afraid to tell people how difficult it was.

At that point, closed captioning in Australia wasn’t that widespread, so I was cut off from even little things like watching TV, or hiring VHS’s or going to the cinema. I remember very clearly coming out of a cinema with all my girlfriends, and realising I hadn’t understood most of the movie, and so I couldn’t join in with their conversation afterwards. It was a devastating feeling sitting quietly trying to follow the conversation around me, and not knowing what they were talking about.

I couldn’t afford decent hearing aids. They are so expensive, and being a university student at the time meant I had very little money.

Another issue was uni, where group work and lectures and tutorials were so hard for me to deal with, because I was struggling to hear what was going on. Going into uni every day was stressful like you wouldn’t believe. I remember one tutorial where I was trying my hardest to lip-read everyone – the lecturer, and the students as they made comments. Usually I was silent in these classes, as I wasnt quite sure who was saying what. But one day I really thought I had a relevent and interesting comment to make about a topic we were discussing. So I put my hand up, said my bit, and there was silence. The lecturer looked at me in a funny way, and said: “I just said that.”

I was so embarrassed. I never made another comment or participated in that class again.

These are the awful parts of deafness. It’s a lonely thing to deal with. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

It got to the point where I was sure I was going to be dependent on my family for the rest of my life. I mean how could I get any well-paying job being as deaf as I was? How would I ever meet a partner? I didn’t feel like I could relax even in the presence of friends because I was always struggling to hear them, so life was just one big constant source of stress.

I was only happy when alone.

The worst thing was, I knew life hadn’t even really begun. I was 21! I remember thinking: “This is not even the beginning. Life is just going to get harder.”

The way I felt, life was already unbearable… And it was about to get a lot harder.

The night I considered suicide, I remember so clearly.

I’d had a particularly bad night at uni, had a fight with my mum, had almost missed the bus home, had a terrible, awkward conversation with a friend of mine – it was late at night, and as I walked through the darkened Sydney streets towards my house, I said to myself: “That is it. I can’t take it anymore.”

I made the decision then and there that I would kill myself, and that it needed to be that night.

The most enduring memory of that moment is how time suddenly stood still. All I can remember was the sense of calm that came over me. My breathing, my footsteps on the pavement, the bright clear moon high above me, the darkened, damp city streets, the street lights. Everything became acutely clear and still. There was a heavy, calm feeling in my chest, the first time that I had ever felt the jittery feeling leaving my heart and stomach.

That was what frightened me the most. How very calm I was. I was so detached, so rational. It was like a relief.

I realised that this was the biggest decision I had ever made in my life, and there was some strange comfort in having taken control back in my life – I started rationally thinking it through. What were the pros and cons of dying. How would I do it. Was there anything that I thought might improve to stop me from doing it.

I walked and walked the dark streets, and thought long and hard.

As I went through the pros and cons, the thing that caused me to pause was that I didn’t know what happened after death, and therefore, I couldn’t prove that what I was experiencing now would end when I died. If it didn’t end, would I be doomed to be stuck in this eternal moment?

I also knew my mum would be devastated.

Finally I came to a decision. It was a feeling I wanted to end, not my life per se. So I said to myself: “No. Death is not the answer. I will not do it. I will find another way to end this feeling. ”

I walked all the way back to the apartment I shared with my mum, in that calm, still, transcendent state. I realised how close I had come. I walked upstairs, sat down at my desk, wrote my mum a letter telling her what I’d planned on doing, and how I had decided not too, but that I would need help. I then went to bed.

I slept, but it wasn’t like any sleep I have had before. I closed my eyes, and lay in one position all night, neatly under the covers, unmoving until the sun came up. It seemed the night was over in a few seconds. I opened my eyes to find my mum standing over me, looking down at me with stillness in her eyes, holding the letter.

She didn’t look upset or anything. And I remember her saying, I will help you. And I got up, we went and had a cup of tea in the kitchen, and talked. And I knew then that everything was going to be alright.