Speechless (Harry Styles AU)

Preface

Preface

Silence is deadening. It echoes through our bodies in the most horrible situations. It chills us to the bone. Silence the scariest of sounds because it is the absence of sound. It is what we hear when we are alone. When there is no one for us to be with. Silence is the thing that we fight our hardest to avoid. We fill our lives with meaningless noise if it means escaping any moments of it.

Being silent is different. Remaining speechless is something we barely every accomplish. We constantly speak our opinions if it means filling a void. We spill meaningless words that no one cares to hear but we feel heard because they were simply stated aloud.  Those who remain silent do it as a choice. They choose to let their opinions fall into the shadows and never have them heard.

My name Genevieve and I am silent.

It’s been 14 years since I last spoke. 14 years since I last uttered a single word. I am unable to speak. I am unable to share my opinions even if I chose to do so.

My name is Genevieve and I am mute.

I was born normal, like every other little kid I made noise from the moment I left my mother’s stomach, whether that may be screaming crying or just incomprehensible babble. I was average, learned to walk perfectly on time, I said mama and dada like every other child.

Then I turned two.

I have been told the story many times before. It was a sunny, beautiful summer day just after my second birthday. I was out on our play set while my mother was on the porch keeping an eye on me and reading her book. She looked away for a split second and I fell 8 feet from where the slide was set.  When she reached me I was completely unconscious and unmoving so they took me to the hospital and discovered I had managed to damage the Broca's area of my brain which controls speech and language.

I never spoke another world after that day.

When I awoke I opened my mouth to say something and not a single sound came out.

And with that my family broke.

From that moment on I had to relearn how to communicate. I learned sign language but I never liked to use it. People always stared when I was in public.

My mother became over protective and paranoid.

My father shut my mother out for years until he couldn’t take it anymore and left my mother for his longtime mistress.

My older sister became bitter and angry at me because I was getting all the attention so when she turned 18 she ran away.

My single fall altered the course of not only my life, but my entire family’s life.

We haven’t been the same for 14 years.

I thought that life would remain that way for the rest of time.

Changed from my early years, but still the same.

The same daily struggles to be normal and communicate.

The same people staring at me.

The same old town.

The same old life.

Then my mother decided we need a change of scenery and I was forcibly removed from school and shipped half way across the country to start a new school in a new town.

But this was only the beginning of the changes I would experience.

My life was forever changed once more when I met a boy who was just as misunderstood as I was.

My life was forever changed when I met Harry Styles.