As a hard-of-hearing person, I have a choice. With a press to the on-switch, I am a hard-of hearing teenager in the hearing world. Another squeeze to the off-switch, I am deaf in a silent world. I can choose to be either in the hearing world or the deaf world. I could even keep one foot in each world at the same time if I drove myself to it. And that is what I am driving myself to do, to unite, not the worlds, but the people on them. The worlds should remain separate yet open, people should be able to flow in and out easily as one would do in Greece or Switzerland. Different world, different cultures, yet there is an ease to venture in and out of the worlds. The melting pot. I will advocate for the deaf, and inform hearing individuals one-by-one about the deaf world. I will show them that we are not uneducated idiots. I will show deaf individuals that it's not the end of the world to be raised in the hearing world, that it's not a curse to not know ASL even though one is deaf themself. I will show them that having their secret world open up to us while preserving it's culture is an advantage. I am thankful for being stuck in these two worlds, because now I can be a piece of a bridge that soon will connect these unique, yet amazing cultures. But before I can do that, I need to get to know the deaf culture better, I need to imerse myself in it and I'm excited for that experience.


Happy Thanksgiving!