Girl With A Funny Accent

On top of my Apraxia of Speech diagnosis, and this is something I don't speak about as often as I should, I was 90% deaf in both ears at the age of 2-3 years old. No wonder I had speech delays, right?  Our ears filter out wax, allowing our eardrums to vibrate and interpret the beautiful sense of'sound. However, my ears were not filtering out wax-actually there was such a buildup of wax behind my eardrums that they were hardly vibrating at all.  My parents discovered this after some stubborn exchanges of me turning up the TV volume, them turning it back down, and me turning it back up again.  I had about five sets of tubes in both ears to drain the wax. And I don't necessarily recall the procedure but I do recall the pressure and the discomfort. It was scary! It feels like a balloon about to pop and all of a sudden you hear this gushy, liquid noise whistling out of your ear.  For my age, and what little I knew of the human anatomy, I was wondering why the

Special. Slow. Challenged. Non-Verbal. 90% Unintelligible. Uncoordinated. These were the labels tied to my name, or at least written on my old IEP reports starting from Kindergarten. I have the luxury now of re-reading these reports and smiling, but at the time they were written, there was nothing to smile about. I smile now because everyone involved in these meetings-me included- had no idea what I'd amount to years later as an adult. You read these terms, these labels, and we naturally assume the worst for the future ahead. On paper I was destined to struggle. In person, I was destined to be whatever my abilities allowed. Paper can change. It's the person-and their hopes and hard work- that changes it. These sheets of paper could easily have been a crutch. But why would I want that? If others can succeed without these sheets of paper, then why can't I? Time and time again I'd take the harder route just for the satisfaction that I was doing