saturngirl86

As a CODA, or a Child Of Deaf Adults, I’ve experienced a lot things in my life that were different from most others.

For one, a CODA is oftentimes responsible for their parents.

I was their door to the open world.

I had to interpret for them at the grocery store, at the bank, when running into friends on the street.

I was their hearing aid, their seeing-eye dog, their cane, their crutch.

My mother had endured a lot of abuse, growing up, as a default of her deafness.

She was treated like a maid in a surrogate family in which she was living with when she was attending a school for the deaf in Washington. She was subject to abuse by an discriminatory and controlling house-mother in an another boarding school for the deaf. She was not taught sign language until she was 18-years old, leaving her absent of language up until that age. She had the mentality of an 8-year old at 16.

As a result of this, she had a lot of communication skills that were missing. This would result in a lot of miscommunication, a lot of misunderstandings, and a lot of anger.

I felt responsible for her.

My parents divorced when I was 3 years old, as a result of a marriage that was based around my birth. It never should have happened, and thus, it didn’t work. I never really thought about my parents being divorced as a bad thing, I just accepted it for what it was, because I never really knew any different. This was just like my parent’s deafness. It was just how it was, nothing else was really different. It was just like living in a household with Korean parents, I would tell some people. “At home, you speak Korean, and outside, you speak English with your friends. That’s the same way with me. At home, I speak Sign Language, and outside, I speak English with my friends.”

I would chuckle sometimes at the fact that I could put English down as my second language on my SAT’s.

I learned ASL – American Sign Language, as a first language, before I could speak. People asked me how I learned how to speak, with two deaf parents, who had voices that were much different than people who could hear. I didn’t really have an answer for them. I truly didn’t know. I would just say: “TV, family, you know, that stuff.” But, my guess was just as good as theirs.

They say that if a child learns more than one language before a certain age, their brains develop better than others. I guess that’s true. People would always tell me that I was smart, “special,” perfect. Of course, I thought that they were out of their minds. How could anybody be “perfect”? That sounded preposterous to me. Of course, later in my life, I set out to prove them wrong.

Interpreting is an exhausting task. One time, I had invited my step-father, Mike Brinker, to a lecture by the college counselor at my high-school about applying to college. Since we could not find an interpreter for the event, I had to interpret for him. Afterwards, I was exhausted. I had to go home and lay down on the couch for a nap. I interpreted for almost two hours. Your hands get numb and your brain feels as though it is about to fall out of your head. You’re speaking two languages at once. English comes in, ASL comes out. In and out. In and out. In and out.

Interpreting is an arduous task. We could never find an interpreter, which would result in me taking the wheel. Apparently, interpreters are in high demand no matter where you go. It’s virtually impossible to find one sometimes. This was why I had to interpret for my parents so often.

It became emotionally taxing at times, functioning as buisness aid to my family instead as a member of it. There was one day, when my mother and step-father decided to take a sailing course so that they could learn how to use their new sail-boat. It was small, just 15 feet, but it was my mother’s dream to have one. Coincidentally, that day was the Gay Pride day parade in San Francisco. I had wanted to go so badly, but since my mother needed me to interpret, I begrudgingly agreed to go with her.

We arrived at the harbor, and waited for the instructor to meet us at his office. Finally, he arrived, and we entered to introduce ourselves. I walked in alongside my mother, and she proceeded to talk to the instructor with my aid. She introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Suzie Brinker. You’ll be teaching me and my husband, Mike to sail our boat. This is my interpreter, Lily Frazier-Ransom. She’ll be helping me understand you today during our lesson.”

He welcomed her to his class, and told her that he was excited to have her and was happy to teach her today. He turned to me. I shook his hand, cordially said “Hello, nice to meet you.” Amicable chit-chat. “Yes, thank you. I look forward to helping my mother learn how to sail her boat today.”

I realized that this was the first mention of any relation that I had with my mother besides as an employee.

We left the office, and went outside to meet up with my step-father, Mike. It was a beautiful day. Sunny, bright. The air was crisp and cool with that tinge of salt that sliced through your senses like ice on a new winter frost. It was my favourite feeling. It was so calming, having the water just inches beneath your feet as you stand on the wooden dock. You knew that there were enless rows of barnacles underneath the boards of the boardwalk, and fish swimming about sparingly beneath the boats. You could see the rocks of the levee descend down into the ocean. Although the harbor was not very deep, you knew that just a few meters out that the ocean dropped down to unimaginable depths, harboring who knows what deep below. That was the only thing that made me nervous about sailing. The uncontrolled feeling that you could be dropped into the dark ocean at any time, and become subject to the uncertainty of the deep waves and tides, and the life lurking beneath. That was the only thing that made me nervous.

Despite the peace and quietude of that morning, I was overcome with grief. Suddenly, instead of a daughter, I had become an “interpreter.” I was no longer even related to my own mother. Did she even care? Did she even realize what she was doing? Just because I was interpreting for her – helping her and setting aside my own wishes for that day just for her? Out of the goodness of my own heart? I didn’t care about the rewards, the cash that she offered to pay me that she often times would just forget about. My eyes began to swell up with tears. “No!” I thought to myself. “No! I won’t cry. I wont.” But I couldn’t stop it. As soon as we walked a few feet away from the office door, I burst into tears.

“what’s wrong?” my mother asked me.

“I don’t like that you called me your interpreter. Am I not your daughter? Have you forgotten about that? What’s wrong with you? I’m your daughter, not your interpreter!”

My mother saw my tears, and understood what I was talking about.

“Ok. I’m sorry. I won’t introduce you as my interpreter.”

Ok, great. We’ve got an agreement going on. But, it sounded llike a buisness decision.

My heart still throbbed within my chest. So, she said she was sorry. So, we made up. Things are fine, right? No. I’ve still held that moment inside myself ever since. It’s been years since it’s happened, but I take that as an example of the relatinoship that I had with my mother and step-father for so long. Yes, we were family. Yes, there was plenty of love to go around. But there were times, where my mother just did not think. She could not imagine, what she was doing to me. I was slowly losing my status of a daughter – and becoming a person who did her bidding. Who worked for her. I refuse to be a workhorse for my own mother. Not at all.

But, I still maintain a healthy relationship with her. I still hold my grudges. I still have the feeling that she dosen’t recognize the damage that has been done. I don’t think she will ever fully understand that love dosen’t always mean servitude.

Despite that servitude, I still know that deaf people around the world need services like that, and that I have a personal obligation to help them. It’s beyond myself, I’ve decided. I know I’ve been burned and scarred by a relationship that mildly disintegrated into sterility, but it’s made me recognize that there needs to be people to fill that role. I know now that I need to get out there, and become that interpreter that will fill the positions of so many CODA’s out there who are in the same position that I was in. it’s common, for CODA’s to do this for their parents. Its’ a huge responsibility. It’s common for them to feel burdened, that they have to grow up too fast.

I’ve decided that I want to become nationally certified as an interpreter for the deaf some day. They make a good amount of money. You can be paid upwards of $80.00 an hour. Many times, interpreters tag-team for long term events. I attended my step-sister Claudine’s graduation from UC Berkeley. She was graduating from the social-works department, and I was very proud of her. Coincidentally, she worked at the same hospital that I was born in, the San Francisco University Hospital, on Parnassus Street. I love that name… Parnassus… It sounds like porn asses. That always made me giggle. Regardless, two interpreters attended the event with my father and his girlfriend, Betty-Ann. They would switch off intermittently throughout the event. I assumed, to avoid exhaustion. I understand it well. You get tired, your mind becomes numb, and you begin to lose your ability to creatively interpret all of the words that you hear into ASL. I admired it. I wanted to do it myself. I thought of it as giving back to the deaf community.

They’re a strong headed bunch. Deaf people have an incredibly strong sense of community. Their identity is very decidedly “Deaf.” Their culture is refined, cultural, communicative, and empowered. If a deaf person’s identity is challenged, they rise up in protest, and personally defeat whoever was putting them down.

When the cochlear implant was introduced, the deaf community resisted the idea as if the medical world was trying to euthanize their deaf identity. My father has two of them. He just recently had his second one implanted this week, on September 19^th, 2007. It’s incredible. He’s told me that he can now tell the difference between jazz music and rock. He can hear the birds chirping outside his window in the morning. When he received his first implant, he told me that he had a hard time filtering out all the white noise that we can normally just ignore. When one of his dogs would walk by, clacking its nails on the hardwood floor, my father would clap his hands around his ears in annoyance. Little things like that would get to him. A pen scratching on paper, clicking of the remote control to the TV, the rustling of money in his wallet. He’s been able to accustom himself to these things now. But, now that he has two, who knows what depths his hearing will go to now. I’m excited, ecstatic. I love the progress that my father has made.

The deaf community was not always accepting of the cochlear implant, however. When it was first introduced, deaf people rose up in protest. When a deaf person would receive one, they would be shunned by the deaf community, as though they were a turncoat to their people. Eventually, they realized that it was not a way to delete the deaf way of living, but a way to help those who wanted to make their lives easier. Many parents gave them to their children when they were very young, so that they could grow up with an easier, more normal life. Cochlear implants were like a souped-up hearing aid, made to augment whatever was already there. My father is post-lingual deaf, which means he lost his hearing after he had already become able to understand and speak some words. This made him a better candidate to the cochlear implant. He was lucky; he received the surgery for free through his insurance, Kaiser Permanente. When a cochlear implant is introduced, a couple electrodes are inserted into the inner ear into the cochlea, where millions of little cilli live. The cilli normally vibrate with the vibrations created by the eardrum. These vibrations are read by a nerve connected to the ear, and then sent to the brain to be interpreted into an audio signal. With the cochlear implant, it naturally destroys any remaining hearing that the person has, in order to create a heightened form of artifical hearing. It is still a little bit tinny, or so my father says. But, it is already much better than your run-of the mill hearing aid. This cochlear implant, I believe, will be incredibly beneficial to deaf people around the world. Granted, not all deaf people want to hear. My mother, for example, has a hearing aid. She never uses it, however, because she dosen’t like the noise. She prefers to silence to the noise of the world. Much like my father, she probably was not able to filter out all the white noise, and so everything must have been very overwhelming for her.

I’m happy for the introduction of the cochlear implant. For one, it reduces the need for interpreters. Granted, these people need jobs, and need the money from those who need their servces, but again, the deaf community would feel much better with the ability to be self-reliant. And, it would save me from interpreting for my parents for free for a very long time.

For a few years of my life, I suffered from debilitating anxiety.

I couldn’t take a shower without the feeling of my walls closing in on me and the suspicion of a person wailing in through my bathroom window, searing past the screen with a knife pointed towards my body.

I still managed to get clean, but it was agonizing every time.

One morning, I had pulled an all-nighter to write an English paper. I took a moment to lay down on my bed, just to breathe. I didn’t feel very good after being up all night, stressing over a stupid essay. I had just eaten an early breakfast, so I was mildly lethargic. As I laid there on my bed, I noticed the way that I was breathing. It was just as though I were asleep. I was very tired, so this made sense. However, this particular breathing pattern seemed too quiet, too calm. It frightened me. It aroused feelings of death, insatiable sleep. I was far too tired.

I had a fleeting thought of a man who I was in love with. Unfortunately, he was several hundred miles away in Denver, Colorado, which added to the pain whenever I missed him. I imagined him sitting in a chair in the far right corner of my room, next to my closet.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I exploded. My heart sprang and careened inside of my chest. I felt it ripping out of my body and screaming through my ears. The air around me quivered and shook as my vision blurred at a frightening pace. I felt like I was falling ten thousand feet down at the same speed as the distance that I was falling. I thought that I was dying – having a heart attack – a psychotic episode, who knows.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

I laid there, stiff as a board and heavier than a boulder. I almost called out to my little sister for help, who was upstairs in her bedroom, but I couldn’t get my voice to work. Did I need to go to the hospital? What if I had a heart attack?

I slowly got up, and managed to walk. That day was terrible. I was afraid, morose, and exhausted. I could barely focus. Everything I tried to do was blocked by thoughts about that incidence in my bedroom.

I found out later that it was an anxiety attack.

That, coupled with my suicidal depression, led to my first experience of psychotherapeutic medication. Anti-depressants, as it were. Happy pills. Although I was taking a very small dose, they worked.

I moved out of my home that summer, to Nashville, TN. I got a job with the Nashville Ballet as a 1^st year trainee. It was my first time working in a professional ballet company – I was so excited. So excited, that I decided to stop taking my medication.

This, was a very bad decision. I had moments, where I would just stand in the middle of my room, tears streaming down my face, trying to scream but no sounds could exit my throat – much like a dream where you open your mouth to scream, but you can’t, because your voice doesn’t work when you’re sleeping. I wouldn’t know where to go, what to do, or what to think. Sometimes, I would just let my mind run, so that I could listen to what was really there. I found these words within me: “You will die. You will die tomorrow. You will die.” This terrified me. Was I going to die? Holy shit. I had a medical condition a few years prior where my heart had nearly stopped, resulting in a long hospital stay. My scars were deep. What if it happened again? Am I still at risk? Terror, horrible anxiety came after my stay in a hospital that was filled with screaming girls and horrible hospital food, Midnight EKG’s and ignorant nurses.

I had been confined to my bed with strict medical bed rest. It had been a week, and I had not been able to take a shower save the occasional self-administered sponge bath. I finally convinced a nurse to wash my hair for me. I couldn’t leave my bed, so she had to turn me around and hang my head off the foot of the bed so that she could rinse my hair into a trash can. My hair was falling out in clumps. My hair was everywhere. It was on the floor, in the trash can, on me, on the nurse. It was everywhere. Another nurse walked in the room, and asked: “is that supposed to happen?” I shot her an evil glance. The nurse who was washing my hair replied: “yes. This happens all the time.”

Of course it’s supposed to happen! I was violently annoyed. What kind of nurse wouldn’t put two and two together and see that my hair loss was obviously a result of stress. Hospitals are stressful places! Especially if a doctor tells you that if you don’t follow their directions, that you “run the risk of dying.” That’s pretty scary stuff.

Nevertheless, my life was fraught with fear ever since. It was pure anxiety.

Standing in my bedroom, I could only see yellow light. The incandescent bulbs on my ceiling were glowing through my head, spilling into my mind and illuminating everything inside. I could never make sense of it all. So, I would just stand there and cry. Shaking, like a spider that had fallen down from the ceiling, hanging from its thread, swinging aimlessly around an empty room. I was that spider. Afraid, because I didn’t know where to go or what to do- paralyzed with fear.

One day, I was having my usual breakdown. Fear, quivering, tears streaming down my face, mouth open in a silent wail to the sky. I had a thought:

“I am alone”

I was motionless. From that moment on, that was the only thought in my head for almost a week. My mind was reeling. The thought was purely my own. I would breathe slowly, air creeping down my throat and softly peering at my insides, watching the black toil and the oceans within me splash among the villi of my intestines. My mind was clear. I couldn’t take control of it, so it was completely in control. When that thought began to lose its hold in my mind, I moved on to a different thought that I could find lurking within my head. That went on for weeks, then months. Almost a year had passed, and slowly, I would breathe and let my mind slowly unwind, unfurl, like a ball of yarn slowly rolling, leaving a trail of thread behind. That was my mind.

I would listen constantly to Eckhart Tolle. His spiritual teachings led me through some of the hardest times, despite my newfound mentality. I was living with two of my co-workers at Nashville Ballet II. One of them, I was fine with. We got along, despite my process into and out of debilitating anxiety. The other, we were at hell from the start, which continued up until the day that I left.

The day after my “enlightenment,” I entered the ballet studios of Nashville Ballet. I sat down in a corner of the room to stretch and warm up for class. I had focused purely on moving as slowly as possible, within reason. I wasn’t about to become a human sloth, drawing attention to me as though I were a mannequin moving slowly to life in front of my comrades. Not a good idea. So, slowly but verdantly, I moved throughout my day. I was calm and serene. Even my co-workers noticed. Jimmy Joiner, one of the 2^nd year trainees there at Nashville Ballet commented on my newfound mood.

“You’re just so… chill”

I smiled. I was. The slowness helped me a lot. We began rehearsal. I just danced and calmly smiled at everyone around me, as though I were silently acknowledging everybody in their own right, my presence beaming out as though I could embellish the entire world. That was a wonderful day. I would breathe in and out, in and out, in and out. Whenever my mind began to race with panic, I would just slow down and breathe, and control my thoughts.

“I am alone… I am alone... I am alone... I am alone...”

My breath followed the words. In and out. In and out. I was chanting mantras. These were my mantras.

I eventually had to change my mantra from time to time. It would evolve into such things as; “I am serene” or, “I can.” Whatever helped with the situations at hand, or whatever I was going through at the time. I eventually began acknowledging whatever I saw within me. I was very spiritual at the time. I would cast runes, read my own tarot, burn candles and meditate, burn incense, place offerings to spirits upon the fireplace in my room that no longer burned. I would chant things like… “I am a witch.” Or “I am psychic.” I would adopt that persona as I chanted. I would become that person that I saw within myself. It was as though I was acknowledging it so that I could purge it out of my system, so that I could come closer to my true self.

I do not believe that it is possible to authentically “know” your true self. It is true, that I will never know my true self, although now I am closer than ever. I can now walk down a hallway, and brush aside any remnants of fear or anxiety. If I do feel them, I ride the waves, and let them take me aside. I know now that fear, anxiety, any emotion or feeling that may drag you down are not truly a part of you. You are not your anxiety. Your anxiety is not a part of you. In fact, you are just you. Simple as that. They have a function, I have decided. They have a purpose. Occasionally, I have thoughts in my head that pop out of nowhere. Recently, I have been listening to the occasional phrase:

“I want to go home.”

Of course, this “home” does not exist. I think of the home I grew up in, that’s not the home I’m listening to. Even when I’m in my own home, or wherever I am living at the time, and I still think: “I want to go home.”

I know now that these thoughts come whenever I am distraught or afraid. It is a comfort, a saying that a small child would cry out when they are upset or afraid. “I want to go home!!”

I now try to verbalize whatever I am really feeling whenever that thought pops up. Instead of “I want to go home,” I think: “I am sad that I am sitting at my home bored with nothing to do this weekend because I am new here and I know nobody in this town.”

Again, it’s much like taming a small child within myself. It’s like telling a little boy: “use your words, Timmy!” When he throws a fit and hits his fists on a table and cries when he wants something or is angry. This, I feel, is a portrait of the mind. Some philosophers or spiritual teachers call it the “monkey mind.” The incessant chatter within us that never stops.

“I am scared, what am I doing? What is this? Oh man, I wanna go. Let’s go. Can we please go? I really want to go! What is that? Oh crap, I’m scared. This really isn’t okay. Okay, it’s scary, we really need to go. I really need to go!”

This “I” refers to the self. Not you, per se. It is your “self.” The self can be referred to as the chatterbox that never stops in your head. It is similar to the concept of the mind. It is what you think you are, but in fact, you are not. Do you ever notice that whenever you speak about yourself, you are speaking about your self, separate from you? It’s like speaking in second person.

“I can do it myself!” -- Myself can do it…

So, the self, speaks for you, or rather, for itself. The mind/self can be afraid. You, however, you are not. You are patiently silent. Your being, exists patiently and silently, moving throughout the ether as a quiet vessel, needing to open up to the outside world and bare it’s inner workings, spiraling out like a spaceship landing into an open sea.

On a tangent… look at what I just said: “The self speaks … for itself.” So, does this imply that the self also has a self? Now, we enter into the spiral of the self. Does this mean that the self is neverending? Just like a fractal? You have a self, but you are not your self. The self speaks for itself, not for you. So, the self speaks for itself – that must mean that the self’s self speaks for itself as well. It goes on and on.

Not only would I chant words or phrases in my mind, but I would also employ visualizations and imagery within myself. At one point, to keep my mind whole and in line, I visualized myself within it, holding two sides of my brain apart with my hands, standing strong and open. Like Da Vinci’s man, arms and legs outstretched in a large star shape, holding two sides of a mind apart, to have a small space of quietude and peace. Either side was the monkey mind, chatting and holding fear and panic, suffering. My space lasted for a long time, until the strength failed and my two sides came back together again.

I would visualize my body, and all parts within it. I formulated a map of the self within my body. It was a map of the soul, the spirit, or the being. It began with a seed in the very middle. That was the star, the central point of the being. Then there was a shell, much like a grain of rice, surrounding it, then another outside that. There were a few inside the body, until there came a shape outside, another vessel, a rice-shaped sphere surrounding the body. That was the final orb, the final barrier. This was my map of my self. I would dance within it, holding it inside of me as my self, becoming me.

None of these things last. But, they maintain a memory within me that I can use for the rest of my life. I hold these things inside as a useful tool to keep in an arsenal in case I ever need to pull something out of my bag of tricks in a sticky situation.

A mind is a very useful tool. It is tricky. You may feel that you have no control over it, or that it has complete control over you. Some people feel very calm and at peace with themselves, and have no need to analyze their own minds. I believe that anybody can benefit from the “aha” moment that I have undergone. Introspective surgery, as it may be. But, not all people feel the need to do so. It is entirely up to you. You create your own path, as you are an individual.

The self is to be debated. If you truly want to study all the philosophies behind spiritual becoming, pick up a book by Eckhart Tolle. He is a great teacher, and a great jumpstart for your own travelings of the being. I listened to his CD’s of “The Power of Now.” He tells the story of his own “aha” moment, where in a moment of utter despair, chaos, and emergency, he suddenly had a single thought, a revelation, and suddenly – his mind stopped. Bliss began, and he’s lived that way ever since.

Now, I, nor him, can guarantee utter peace. Not everybody gets that. I sure didn’t. I still underwent pain and suffering, anxiety and depression even after my “aha” moment. But, I still maintained a sense of clarity to hold myself together and move through the pain, to the permanent “other side.” Even now, I intermittently feel the pang of anxiety in my stomach, prompting me to do things that I don’t want to do. But, I acknowledge it, and let it pass. I stop and breathe before moving impulsively and irrationally, and then get up to move naturally, peacefully.

Let yourself go. This is the main idea. Relax into the experience of just being. Let yourself go, and you can become your true self in the making.

Good luck.