TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE & ALCOHOLISM

Deafness, that was a new facet of difficultly in my life.

Ever wondered what it's like? You know when you go swimming and you stick your head under the water? And every sound is dulled and warped? That's what it's like. It's like constantly swimming in a world of silence, with occasional pinpricks of sounds at selective pitches.

I spent so much of my time wishing that I didn't have to hear the hurtful things my father said, the hurtful things kids in my class said, the sound of my mother being hit over and over and over that I finally got what I wanted.

The moral of the story is: be careful what you wish for; nothing is ever as you dream it up.

I'd never been grateful for being able bodied, I'd never truly considered it a privilege, I just accepted it as the way I experienced life. But now one of my senses is as blunt as a spoon I've come to realise how privileged I was. You don't necessarily think of hearing as one of the important senses. Sight is the one thing you think you can't live without, but you'd be shocked how deafness can turn your life upside down.

I'd never put in the time to lip read more than adequately and American Sign Language was at the time unheard of for me; it wasn't mandatory to learn in school. So suffering in silence with my disability, my educational career went down the potty and my social skills suffered significantly.

My summer was spent in crisis, trying to work out how to live life lacking one of my senses. Everything had changed.

Walking down the street, I could see people's lips moving and hear the burble of chatter, but nothing was distinct - it was just an amalgamation of overlapping noises. Birdsong was something I missed: I watched the loons and coots splash down the canal; but I didn't hear their squalls or the beat of their wings. Cars, I missed the toots of the horns, the screech of their tires and the revving of their engines.

Living life deaf is like watching a movie muted.

Working the butchers became near impossible, I had to watch the customers lips intently, until I unnerved them with my invasive observation. Every other word I had to guess, replaying the motion of their lips in my head and matching the movements with my own. I must've looked insane.

It was strange hearing a distorted version of my own voice, I could only despair to think how my articulation had slipped.

My father wasn't sober enough to notice my transition from a quiet, crying child to a silent, crying child. He was too drunk to notice that I didn't react to his verbal abuse. He was so out of his mind from the liquor that it went unnoticed to him that I didn't flinch at the slamming of doors, shattering of plates or glasses and the sound of fist or boot on another human being.

Deafness meant I didn't know when or where the next hit was coming from, meaning I ended up looking more like a ragdoll than I ever did before.

My ma' was too absorbed in her grief and working the farm to be attentive to me and my new found affliction. Though she tried, she had our family business to support, our medical bills to pay and my dad's expensive drinking habits to cover. But no amount of surgery in that day and age was going to repair my hearing.

So after throwing a tantrum at my one confidante, I returned to her door like a hungry stray. I tapped on the door, the knocking sound muffled by my numb ears, a bouquet of flowers I'd plucked from a street as I'd made the trip to her house displayed in my hands.

Because  I needed someone. I needed Kate.

Eleanor's live-in maid answered the door - Maria, I'd come to know her as - and she gave me a stern once over before her features blossomed into a smile. "... Clint! ... ... Katherine you're after?" She asked, half of her words too fast to be registered by my eyes.

"I'd like to see Kate," I said politely, nodding like I understood what her nanny had said.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, awkward where I stood. I toyed with the flowers gripped in my sweaty palms, the green of the stems rubbing off on my palms and the scent of pollen thick in my nostrils; my nose twitching, I resisted the urge to sneeze.

"She'll ... ... ... a moment!" The older woman replied with a beaming grin, her old yellowed teeth bared to me. She turned and called something up the stairs.

Unable to hear the usual racket of Kate darting down the stairs, I waited impatiently for her to emerge. She sauntered up to the door looking unimpressed.

"Go," she said sharply to Maria, their maid, and the old woman bowed her head and scuttled off into the luxurious recesses of the house. "What's that?" Kate snapped, nodding to the weeds and flaccid flowers in my hands.

"Peace offering?" I chuckled dryly, wincing as I offered her the tatty bouquet.

She lurched back at the sight of the plants robbed from the roadside and shook her head. Finally her face broke out into a smile. "You're an idiot." There were few enough words in that sentence for me to follow, and I was used to seeing her say it. "No need ... ... ... offering," she mumbled, her lips hardly moving as she spoke.

"Can I come in, then?" I requested, fidgeting on her porch.

"Leave that ... ... ... my doorstep ... yeah," she replied, taking the bunch of dead plants from my hands and chucking it out onto her front lawn like compost.

She lead me through her house by the hand, her back to me and nattering all the way. Little did she know I couldn't make anything out but the hum of her words.

"Kate-" she didn't turn around and didn't stop yammering. "Kate." I tried again, but she didn't halt her burbling. "Katie!" I raised my voice and finally she turned around with a face like thunder.

"What?!" She exploded, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms defensively. She always hated me calling her Katie - said it made her feel like she was in preschool again.

I choked my words and made an estranged noise in the back of my throat. "Kate, I'm deaf," I admitted for the first time aloud, albeit I couldn't hear myself say it.

"What ... ... ... deaf?" She strung all of the words together.

"You're going to need to slow down, I can't follow what you're saying," I sobbed, tearing up, my body taut with frustration.

"What do you mean you're deaf?" She said so slow it was agonising for me to watch, but I still appreciated the effort.

I shook my head with my lips pressed tight together, gnawing on my lip with self-pity. I looked about, checking if Maria or Eleanor were present and found we were pleasantly alone. "Something happened, Kate. My dad, he-" I gesticulated wildly, trying to explain without saying the words. "-and when he did, he kicked my head and something happened and now I can't hear!" I spluttered, the tears spilling down my cheeks.

"Can you hear me..?" She checked, her words drawn out and relying heavily on gestures to support her words.

"I can't hear much, I'm going on reading your lips..." I replied, a solemn apology written across my face.

Then Kate did something completely unexpected. She threw herself at me and hugged me tight, her face buried in my shoulder and her hand smoothing up and down my spine like I was an agitated animal. Kate had never been overly affectionate, she was an aloof lone wolf; so you could understand my surprise when she squeezed me so tight I was convinced my ribcage would implode.

She drew back and frowned deeply at me. "Are you sure it isn't temporary? That is won't go away?" She said tautologically, making sure I got the point.

I shook my head, no.

And she hugged me again. I was sure she was murmuring sweet nothings against my shoulder, anything to ease the tragedy of what had happened to me.

For the rest of the summer I spent most of my time at Kate's, avoiding hardship at the butchers where I'd have to ask customers to repeat themselves multiple times as I floundered for understanding. Kate understood, Kate knew what was wrong, Kate made time for me.

But going back to school was a new kind of hell. Thrown into an already hostile environment with the added stress of a disability. The corridors I used to know as rowdy had become but a vague hum in my ears and the voices I had become accustomed to had been drowned out of my world.

The register was one of the most stressful parts of my day. I could barely remember who came before me, but I was thankful it was very few. I used the kid speaking up ahead of me as a cue to answer to my name after. I was going to at least keep up the pretense that everything was fine - like I said; schoolkids can be equated to sharks: they smell weakness.

But Kate helped, sometimes when she saw I wasn't following a conversation - normally from the furrow of my brow and my eyes locked on someone's lips - she'd repeat it slower for me, or mouth it to me. When someone was trying snare my attention for whatever reason, she'd slip her fingers between mine and squeeze my hand. We almost had our own little code - and for that, I was endlessly grateful.

Lessons became difficult, I had to keep one eye on the teacher's lips as I noted down their words in lined workbooks; I was thankful when their sprawl of words crept onto the whiteboard or we were told to copy from a textbook. But nonetheless, my work ethic began to flag with the added tier of difficulty and I fell behind in class as I missed out of hearing what to do during the lesson.

I knew I had really fallen behind like the weak runt of the pack when I got my report card. I was bombarded by a list of 'D's and one F. That was the start of my failing academic career. I buried that report card in my bag for as long as I could, denying that I was flunking. But eventually it was dug out and then parents' evening rocked around. Nothing could prepare me for the trouble I was going to land myself in.

I sat there with my teacher, shrunk down in my seat, trying to compact myself out of existence, listening to the reprimanding words leaving his lips. I watched my ma's face fall as the truth about my school career fell on her ears. I watched her feigned happiness wilt. But not once did she look at me.

The car journey home was near silent - not just because of my duff hearing.

"Your education is important, Clint," I managed to read her lips say. "You need to make an effort."

"It's not my fault," I grumbled as we pulled into the driveway.

"Whose fault is it, then?" My mother asked, taking the keys out of the ignition.

"You know whose fault it is..." I murmured, clambering out of the car and slamming the door.

What came next, was I'm sure a monologue about how it wasn't my dad's fault. The words "responsibility" "maturity" "trauma" "father" and "Vietnam" cropped up multiple times, but the words were nothing but a humming noise.

"It's his fault my education has gone to shit-"

"Language!" I was interrupted.

"As if that drunk old asshole doesn't spew enough bad words!" I complained.

"I don't want you to be like him, Clint! And no matter what he does, he's still your father; you cannot speak about him like that!" My mother raised her voice back, her lips moving in big enough, articulate motions for me to understand.

I could feel her trying to keep the only normal thing in her life, just that, normal. With Barney out exploring the world, I was the one good thing she had left, she desperately did not want to see me fail. She didn't want me to end up like my father; without an education and enlisted into the army because any other work was out of the question with nil qualifications.

"That's not fair! He's supposed to set an example to me!" I argued, inserting my key into the lock and sweeping Ito the house.

"Life's not fair! Get used to it!" My mother yelled back.

"No, I refuse to accept that! Kate's dad doesn't abuse her!" I stormed into the hall.

"Clinton Francis Barton!" She snapped back. "Kate hardly sees her father because he works out in New York all year 'round! You should be grateful your father lives with us!"

"Well I'm not!" I screamed, my eyes flooded with tears. "I wish he was dead!" I sprinted up the stairs.

"Clint-"

"I wish you were dead!"

A/N - I managed to put this together a while back, but I did a proof read before uploading this morning. The one bonus of writing it earlier means I can upload it when I wake up in the morning; which is always a leisurely start to the day.

So, Clint's deaf, and his life's been turned on it's head. Can it get any worse?

Dedication goes to marvel_4_life! x