There are three things that produce such beautiful sounds, that countless poems have been written about them.
Oceans, waterfalls, and rain.
I’ve only been to the ocean once. Sounds of Cedar played a gig in Galveston two years ago and I joined them for the trip. The morning after the concert, I walked to the beach. I took my shoes off and sat down in the sand and watched the sun rise.
I remember this feeling building inside me as I watched it. Almost like every negative emotion I’ve ever felt was evaporating with each new ray of sun that trickled out over the horizon.
It was a feeling of complete and utter awe, like nothing I had ever experienced. And as I sat there, I realized I was in awe of something that occurs every single day, and has occurred every single day since the very first sunrise. And I thought to myself, “How can something be so magnificent when it isn’t even a thing of rarity?”
The sun and its rise and fall is the most expected, dependable, and repetitive natural occurrence known to mankind. Yet, it is one of the few things that maintains a universal ability to render a man speechless.
In that moment as I sat alone on the beach, my toes buried in the sand, my hands wrapped around my knees…I wondered, for the first time, if the sunrise made a sound. I was almost positive it didn’t. If it did, I was sure I would have read about it. And I was sure there would be more poetry about the sound of the sunrise than there is about oceans or waterfalls or rain.
And then I wondered what that same sunrise must feel like to those who could hear the ocean as the sun broke itself free from the constraints of the horizon. If a soundless sunrise could mean so much to me, what must it mean to those who watch it as it’s accompanied by the roll of the water?
I cried.
I cried…because I was deaf.
It’s one of the few times I’ve ever felt resentful about this part of me that has limited my life so significantly. And it’s the first and only time I’ve ever cried because of it. I still remember how I felt in that moment. I was angry. I was bitter. Upset that I had been cursed with this disability that hindered me in so many ways, even though most of my days were spent not even thinking about it.
But that day—that moment—gutted me. I wanted to feel the complete effect of that sunrise. I wanted to absorb every call of the seagulls flying overhead. I wanted the sound of the waves to enter my ears and trickle down my chest until I could feel them thrashing around in my stomach.
I cried because I felt sorry for myself. As soon as the sun had risen fully, I stood up and walked away from the beach, but I couldn’t walk away from that feeling. The bitterness followed me throughout the entire day.
I haven’t been back to the ocean since.
As I sit here with my hands pressed against the tile of the shower, the spray of the water beating down on my face, I can’t help but think about that feeling. And how, until that moment, I never truly understood what Maggie probably feels on a daily basis. Bitter and hurt that she was dealt a hand in life that she’s expected to accept with grace and ease.
It’s easy for someone on the outside to look in and think that Maggie is being selfish. That she’s not thinking about anyone’s feelings but her own. Even I think that a lot of the time. But it wasn’t until that day on the beach two years ago that I truly understood her with every part of my being.
My being deaf limits me very little. I’m still able to do every single other thing in the world besides hear.
But Maggie is limited in countless ways. Ways that I can’t even fathom. My one bitter day on the beach alone when I truly felt the weight of my disability is probably how Maggie feels on a daily basis. Yet those on the outside of her illness would probably look at her pattern of behavior and say that she’s ungrateful. Selfish. Despicable, even.
And they would be right. She is all those things. But the difference between Maggie and judgmental people who aren’t Maggie is that she has every right in the world to be all those things.
Since the day I met her, she has been fiercely independent. She hates feeling as if she’s hindering the lives of those around her. She dreams of traveling the world, of taking risks, of doing all the things her illness tells her she can’t do. She wants to feel the stress of college and a career. She wants to revel in the independence the world doesn’t think she deserves. She wants to break free of the chains that remind her of her illness.
And every time I want to scold her or point out everything she’s doing wrong and all the ways she’s hindering her own longevity, I only need to think back on that moment at the beach. That moment that I would have done whatever it took to be able to hear everything I was feeling.