Honor the Horrors of the Internet

I'm There

1.Hi, my name's Pascale. I've lurked this subreddit for about 2 years now, usually just passing through. I have a story to tell, now. But it's not mine... I hope that's okay. My neighbour, Jackson Barrett, passed away 2 weeks ago. He left me a note asking me to carry out a couple things for him. I found a half completed journal, and after a week of searching his property, I think I've found all the pages that he tore out. Many sleepless nights later, I've compiled what he had to say. After posting this, which is what I think he wanted, I'll be passing on the hard copy to his wife.

A quick Google search will tell you that 0.38% of the population, or 3.8 people per thousand, are deaf. More than half of people with hearing loss are over the age of 65, with only 4% being under the age of 18. I fell into neither of those categories when I started to lose my hearing. Silently, I never identified as a deaf person. My family and I learned sign language. I checked all the survey boxes. I even subscribed to a couple HOH forums. But, see, I wasn't deaf. I could hear you just fine... Sort of. Of those 3.8 people in a thousand, I was the .8.

It began when I was 25; a rainy September evening, curled up on the couch with my girlfriend, Andie. I was rather passively stirring a cup of coffee, its temperature dropping steadily with the breeze from an open window that would refuse to shut even once during our 4 year stay in a narrow Portland apartment.

She was as stunning as ever, just sandy waves tied into a messy bun, her reading glasses reflecting the paper article that she read aloud to me. I nearly tuned her out, instead studying the dying light refracting off her cheekbones, sharp as glass. She glanced up, catching my eye, and frowned.

"Jackson, are you listening to me?"

It all started with that one sentence. 6 words and all of them not wrong, but not right.

There was the smallest little seam between what I saw, and what I heard. I could have sworn that the words she said to me left her an infinitesimal fraction of a millisecond before she began to mouth the words.

Have you ever had an external speaker connected to your phone/TV/computer? Or two? Sometimes they don't pair right, and one or the other is just a touch ahead or behind, creating an annoying little echo between your senses. It's there, and once you notice it, any focus you may have had is out of the question until you fix the problem. That's how it felt, only there was no shadow of sound. Instead, I was hearing something that began before it should. That's how it started, my senses disconnecting as they unpaired from each other and moved on without my consent.

I stared at her for a couple seconds, before meekly encouraging her to go on. I brushed it off, rubbing my eyes. I chalked it up to too much coffee, not enough sleep.

Andie kept reading, periodically sneaking her gaze to mine to see if she was losing me again. But she had my unwavering attention; I set my cup down on the cluttered pleather ottoman, and focused all of my being into the consistent echo behind each of her syllables.

I did not sleep well that night, as the storm berated the large bay window opposite our bed. Though my back was to it, I knew without looking that the sound of angry raindrops colliding with the glass was happening just a split second too soon.

It was consistent for a while, getting neither better nor worse. The echo demanded to be felt. I refused to acknowledge it or tell anybody, even Andie or my parents, for fear of being diagnosed with some inoperable brain tumor... Or being dismissed as a man mid-breakdown. I almost couldn't tell which was worse. The longer I ignored it, the more I could pretend that it was a totally normal thing to happen to a totally normal person.

It became a steady decline at 28. A modest rock on Andie's ring finger and a swollen belly holding our first daughter, she stocked our dilapidated ("It's vintage, Jackson!") spice rack as I ferried boxes from a large moving truck to our new home, in an Oregon suburb northwest of the city. The sharp ring of the landline cut through the playful classical music emanating from the bare living room.