I was still a few years away from having one of these. What a difference it would have made.

Content warning: This post describes the impact of self-harm during a triggered state.

It was late 2006. I was sitting in the university library at one of the language practice stations, trying to do my mandatory Japanese hour for that week. It was going poorly. I could only properly make out half of the conversation I was supposed to be listening to — actually, half might be generous. This wasn’t the first time, and I’d had even more trouble with German the previous day.

A lot of linguistics students didn’t care about the listening work. Most worked on other things during the mandatory language library time because we were only checked on our time, not the content covered, but I wanted to succeed. Languages were my thing. I was planning to be one of those people who effortlessly slips from one language to another. But in that moment, I felt like another long-held desire was going to slip away from me due to disability.

I became aware that I was in pain. This was a few years before I understood what I could do to myself in a triggered state and several years before I’d learn how to help myself out of one. I was twisting my hands so strongly that I’d dislocated my thumb, biting down on the inside of my cheek so hard that I’d drawn blood. I could only hear a rushing noise, like wind, and I couldn’t see properly. I think someone was talking to me.

And then I was in a medical station. I must’ve understood enough to have complied with instructions to get across there. My thumb had been set and splinted, I had something in my mouth that felt like a pad of gauze, and I had given samples for drug testing. My awareness came back as I was being talked slowly and deliberately to by a man who looked about my age, being asked what I could hear, see, feel, smell and taste. When I was coherent again, I was asked what had triggered the episode. I needed him to explain what that meant.

When I said that I couldn’t hear the recording, he did that thing that dogs do when they’re trying to work out what a human wants: cocked his head to one side. So I said “I’m losing my hearing and I just realised what that means.”

He and I talked for about an hour before he was happy to let me go. I asked if he would have to tell the university, because it might invalidate my visa. He said that it was all confidential. He wished me luck and I headed out.

It was dark. I’d been in the library around lunchtime. I could only account for one hour out of the last six. I could feel the panic rising again because it reminded me of other occasions when I’d lost time like that. Somehow, I breathed through the panic and managed to get on the bus and back to my flat.

That was the day that brought home that I wasn’t going to be okay, that I couldn’t keep ignoring my hearing difference, that it was increasing year to year. I lay on the bed that evening and my brain started cataloguing all the other things I was having difficulty with: differentiating dialogue from incidental music; following conversations in restaurants; people’s names; certain voices. It was like I’d been consciously ignoring but subconsciously recording it all. I lay there, hand and cheek throbbing with pain, with a deep dread because I didn’t know what to do.

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