I'll Scream Later (No Series) Read Online Free

understood the dramas and sitcoms that played out on TV; someone had to fill in the blanks for me. And too often, no one did.
    I had a thousand questions about life, and too many times no one was there who knew how, or would take the time, to explain things to me.
    When my mother would say no, in my memory it was always just no, there was no reason why. I wanted to know why, needed to know, but felt lost and too often was left to figure it out—or not—on my own.
    Here’s how I tried to explain how I felt in an essay I was assigned when I was thirteen. The title: “My Life About Being Deaf…”
    I know that it ruined my life from an early age…. My brothers had fun with me and tried to talk with me but when they both heard that I was Deaf, they were so shocked and couldn’t believe it. And it had depressed them…. What I feel about being Deaf is that it is a hard life for myself.
    As I grew up, I had to find a way of coping. Whether it was my parents, friends, lovers, teachers, the entertainment industry, or for that matter the deafness itself—anyone who said, “No, Marlee,” set powerful emotions churning inside me and I would fight back. Whoever or whatever was trying to hold me back—I would fight against it as if my very life depended on it. And I now believe that it did. That fight, that intensity, that relentless need to break through and connect, has, in many ways, propelled me through this life.
    When I was young, Marc, my aunt Sue, and others saw my temper tantrums as a manifestation of my frustration at not being able to communicate. Temper tantrums are common among Deaf children, and I would imagine among hearing children, too, until barriers to communication are broken through. My mother, though, seemed to view it as my punishing her. My father saw these rows as his own private hell, with him caught between the two people in his life he desperately wanted to be happy.
    An escalating cycle of conflict between my mother and me would reach its height when I hit my teens, which came around the same time as what I now believe were my mother’s increasing bouts of depression. All I knew then is that when my mom closed the door to her room, no one was to bother her, no matter what. I felt closed out, and once again I didn’t understand why. I just knew that the moods were dark and we weren’t supposed to invade.
    One day many years later after I was a mother myself, I was in a grumpy mood and closed the door on Sarah, my oldest child. I suddenly remembered my mom closing her door…. I told myself then to try not to repeat what my mom had done to me as a child. To this day, I try to never close the door to my room at home, and if I do, I always explain why to my kids. I don’t want them to ever feel that I am shutting them out of my life or, worse, that I’m closing the door to escape from them.
    I, too, had a weapon that I would use in fights, my own way of shutting the door—with a turn of my head, communication stopped, all the screaming in the world could not reach me.
    As I entered adulthood, I found that, in a sense, I had to grow up all over again—learning how to set limits for myself, whether itwas my need for drugs or for attention—realizing that I couldn’t control everything, that sometimes I just need to let go and trust; and understanding that just as I wanted to kick down all the doors my mother shut on me, when it mattered most, I needed to find a way not to turn my head away from the difficult moments but to look that problem, that emotion, that person in the eye, and work through it. Essentially I had to unlearn a lot of what I’d been taught as a kid.
    It hasn’t always been easy, and sometimes progress is slower than I’d like—but I work on it day by day.

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    M Y PARENTS ’ DECISION to have me grow up at home, go to mainstream schools, live in and cope in a hearing world, was, without question, the most important of my life, and one that I will forever be grateful for.
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