A moment that changed me: I thought deafness was a defect. Then I met smart, wise, funny Rosie

OOne morning in 2001, as I waited for my university lecture to start, I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I looked up, I saw a young woman smiling at me and holding a notebook in her hand. I knew immediately who she was. The week before we had exchanged emails and I told her I would be sitting in the front row. I always sat in the front, even if that meant sitting alone. To the other students I probably seemed eager and eager to learn. But the real reason was that I am deaf and the teacher had to read lips.

“I’m Rosie,” the young woman said, and I shuffled forward to make room for her. I noticed her hearing aids right away. When we started a conversation, I remember feeling shy and awkward. Rosie was the first person I ever met who was my age and wore a hearing aid. I have hereditary deafness, and my mother and aunts are also deaf, so hearing aids have been a part of my life since I got my first pair as a toddler.

My mother and aunts had to carry large box-like devices in the 1950s and 1960s. But our deafness wasn’t something we talked about. We didn’t learn British Sign Language and often felt like we didn’t belong in the deaf or hearing world. At my school I was the only one who wore a hearing aid. So I was shocked and fascinated when I saw Rosie wearing them. She tied her hair back and didn’t try to hide it like I did.

Our note taker was with us. This was why Rosie and I had connected. Although we studied different subjects, we shared a statistics class, so the university asked us to share a note taker. At the time it felt like an attempt to cut corners on my request for access, but I quickly became grateful for the suggestion.

After the lecture, Rosie and I continued talking. It felt very different from the conversations I had with most other people. For starters, she always remembered to look at me when we talked. I didn’t have to worry that she would look away at any moment and that I would miss a joke or comment. There was an instinctive understanding between us about making communication clear and visible. Despite my shyness, I felt an enormous curiosity to know more about her. I had grown up thinking my deafness was a defect, but here was Rosie, who was smart, wise, full of fun – and deaf. What was the problem?

“I love college,” she told me. “But trying to lip-read everything in lectures is tiring.” I smiled. This was something I never told anyone. Many people assumed that lip reading gave me an almost magical ability to understand what they were saying, but I had to hide the fatigue it caused, or simply stop talking when the fatigue became too much. “I feel the same way,” I admitted.

From that moment on, I felt like a window had opened into my own experience as a deaf person. Part of it was the joy of being able to talk openly. We discussed noisy social events, or just regular group conversations, where we felt on the edge. People who say, “It doesn’t matter” or “It doesn’t matter.” The feeling that you have to work twice as hard to keep up.

Mostly we just enjoyed student life together. We met for drinks and parties, and cooked dinners for each other. I helped Rosie prepare for her campaign to become a student equality and diversity officer. We even joined the local canoe club and left early in the summer to go capsizing (hearing aids removed) in the river. But knowing that I wasn’t the only deaf student at the university made the experience less lonely. It was a kind of kinship I had never known before.

After college, our careers took us in different directions. We still found time to meet each other, go to deaf yoga and watch theater shows with subtitles. We even went on trips together. I also started learning BSL, something I wish I had done sooner. Rosie, who had started learning it as a teenager in the deaf unit of her mainstream school, encouraged me.

We continued to share comments about being deaf. Learning to advocate for myself as a deaf person in the professional world has been difficult. The messages I absorbed as a child – that the only positive narrative society wants to foster about deafness and disability is the ‘inspirational’ way in which it is ‘overcome’ – were deeply ingrained. But Rosie was more enlightened, and she was a fierce and powerful advocate for herself and others. She held up a mirror to me, but was also an example to me and offered an alternative perspective.

Our friendship has now spanned more than twenty years. I learned more about deaf history. My curiosity was fueled partly by what I didn’t discuss with my deaf relatives, but also by everything I talked about with Rosie. She now lives abroad and works as an educational psychologist. She recently texted me to say that she misses the deaf community at home, but she knows that deafness will always be a big part of her identity no matter where she lives. “It’s in me,” she wrote, “just like it’s in you.” It is an essential part of who we are. Twenty years later, our friendship has also become an essential part of who I am.