Many who know me in real life know that I am deaf. But what most people don't know is that I am also a part of the population that hears, yet is deaf at the same time. Allow me to explain.

My parents figured out I was at least hard-of-hearing when I was about 18 months old, as I wasn't talking yet. They looked into everything—hearing aids, sign language, and finally, cochlear implants. It was pretty new technology at the time in 1994; most people didn't know they existed, but they look and function like hearing aids on the outside, linking my brain to my cochlea with a little wire that reads sound waves.

So at age two, I got cochlear implant surgery.

What followed were a long two years for my parents, as I still didn't utter a single word until I was four years old.

I can't even imagine how challenging that must have been for my mother. To be so desperate to hear your child say just one word, and to wait and wait and wait and not know if the implant worked the way it was supposed to work. Mom tells me that the first time she ever told me I was talking too much, she did a double take. She never thought she'd have to tell me to quiet down!

Over the next six years after implant surgery, I went through extensive speech therapy along with deaf education schools, and every day was a whirlwind of new words and labeling sounds. Even now, I still have to pause when I hear something unfamiliar and figure out what the sound is.

I surprised everyone, including myself, when I was cleared to go to "hearing school" in first grade. At the time, most deaf kids took years and years before being ready to go mainstream. It was hard at first, being the only deaf kid in a school of 400 hearing kids. But I didn't really think about it a lot, even though I got made fun of sometimes and was often identified as "The Deaf Girl."

It wasn't until I was in eighth grade, though, that I started resenting being deaf.

I clearly remember people talking about me as if they thought I couldn't hear them, and being referred to as the deaf girl was starting to get REALLY old.

I looked at my friends and how they effortlessly took notes and made conversation and never repeated themselves to each other, and my self-resentment only grew.

I questioned why I was born the way I was.

I thought I was a mistake.

Ten years later, I finally know I'm not a mistake and that God doesn't make mistakes, but it literally took all ten of those years for me to realize that.

High school rolled around, and some kids finally stopped teasing me about being deaf. This was much appreciated. There were the ones who didn't know when to quit, but I learned how to let it roll off my shoulders.

I knew I wasn't stupid, regardless of what others thought. That allowed me to keep my head up, even though I still resented being deaf.

I graduated high school with honors, which was a huge accomplishment for someone who didn't talk until she was four. But still I looked over all that I had achieved and lamented that I was deaf, despite hearing with my implant.

When I was in college, I thought I'd escape being called the deaf girl.

Maybe people would be mature enough to not identify me by my lack of hearing.

But when someone called me the deaf girl on social media, I exploded.

I wrote an angry Facebook post, and then after the uproar died down, I realized that I couldn't escape my deafness. Whenever I take my implant off, the world goes silent. When I put it back on, the world roars to life again.

Now that I'm coming into my final year of college, I have been described as "the girl who's on leadership," or "who lives in Johnson," or "is a graphic design major." I cherish being called those things. But I've also come to realize it is not an insult to be called deaf. I can take ownership of it and allow it to make me a stronger person, rather than a weak person.

For those of you who are struggling with deafness or something else, I'm here. I see you, and I understand you and your pain. It will get better. You will succeed not in spite of your deafness, but because of it. It is not a curse and not an affliction. It is something that marks you uniquely and shapes your life in wonderful ways.