Stepping outside, the sun blares brightly, hitting everything in sight. Those days when the sunlight is so intense you have to shield your eyes—those are the best. The warmth of the air hugs my skin, while a gentle breeze brushes against me, inviting me to breathe in the city’s scent. I catch it all—the hint of trash, the exhaust from passing cars and trucks, a trace of ocean saltiness, the rough scent of cement from the road, and even the faint burn of something unknown. Occasionally, I catch the smell of fire pits, someone grilling, or the fresh scent of laundry venting from a dryer.

Here I am, I’m just wearing: a dark olive-green ribbed tank top and blue jeans. My dark chocolate and golden-brown hair, streaked with hints of gray, is pulled back into a ponytail. My eyes are a sea blue, framed by black glasses. My black hearing aids sit proudly behind my ears. I’ve been told once or twice they look like headphones—people often assume I’m listening to music. But trust me, if I were, you’d hear it from my earbuds. In one hand, I’m usually holding my phone to stay connected with someone during my walk, for safety. Sometimes, I carry a bottle of water to stay hydrated.

Whenever I hit the sidewalk, I take a deep breath and look around, noticing how many people are out and about, or how many cars are rolling down the street. My hearing aids are on, so I hear snippets of voices and the booming of competing music as if each song is battling for volume. I dismiss it and walk on—it’s none of my business, and besides, I can ignore it. I’m Deaf, plain and simple. I just know the music will fade behind me as I move from one neighborhood to the next.

The sidewalk is my only true companion. I hear children screaming, laughing, or yelling something I can’t understand. But I know it’s them—I can recognize the tones through my hearing aids. And then there are my enemies: the moving machines on wheels. Too many drivers seem to think “paying attention” is optional. So, I stick to the trusty sidewalk and stay mindful of my surroundings.

As I take turns left and right to navigate my way to my final stop, I become even more alert to vehicles, people walking, running, biking, rollerskating, skateboarding, and if any animals may come after me or toward me.

This memory takes me back to my school years. I was walking with a friend, chatting in sign language. We were laughing and having a great time. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed two Rottweilers charging toward us. It wasn’t the playful kind of approach—it was clear they weren’t happy.

My friend started backing away, preparing to run, while I stood my ground. I did my best to project authority, summoning all the confidence I could muster, and made a verbal noise—a sound that, as far as I can remember, has always worked for me in such situations.

The dogs were now in the middle of the road, so I pointed back in the direction they had come from. To my surprise, they halted immediately and their aggression dissipated. Within moments, their owner came running through the gate and called them back. The dogs happily turned and trotted back to him.

When I turned to look at my friend, her face was a mix of shock and disbelief. She explained that those dogs had chased her before, and there were even reports of them biting people. She couldn’t believe I had managed to stop them so effortlessly, something she had never been able to do.

The photo below to give my Readers some idea of what Rottweiler looks like if you have never seen one. It is not the same dogs that I personally contracted with.

As we move from my memory to my walking experience, I became alert to my emotions, I feel anxious, restless, grumpy emotion, sad, stressed out, and self-aware of how I looked but in the same emotion, I was feeling little fuck you attitude. I do constantly realize how tight my muscles are from all the anxiety that it was causing.

10 minutes go by, and the emotions of self-aware but fuck attitude disappear quick. As I look at the trees, taking in the houses that have beautiful front yard settings, to what the heck is in your yard, the beauty of the ocean, kids playing around in the soccer field that could be a game or a practice, and/or goofing around in the playground, to people just walking their dogs. Depending on what time of the day I do my walks, I would see children excitedly running away from the bus toward their loved ones. I love seeing flowers, and different types of plants that are throughout the neighborhood, and birds sitting on a branch nearby as they sing their songs. This is also the time, I tend to have muscles cramping so if I was going a bit too fast, I would slow down which tend to help. Sometimes, I had to really slow down as if I was crawling to allow my body rest a little bit before I pick up my speed again as I increase slowly to knowledge the soreness level. This whole cramping tend to take about 5 to 15 minutes before I catch my pace again.

The feelings of stress, anxiety, and restlessness calmed like you would watch boiled water boiling so hard because there was heat underneath. When there was no heat it caused the boil to become smaller and smaller to the point it became flat on the surface. That is what it feels like for me when my emotions are calm and quiet. As I pound on the cement moving my foot in front of another, I would start feeling different emotions about a situation that would randomly pop up in my head ranging from a memory as a small child, or something that I am struggling with the situation, to the possibility of feeling hurt from situations that I can’t seem to escape from. I will be honest with you I have a harder time remembering the good times because it is rare. I find myself more often than not just thinking about something I felt I was not heard and I just screamed in my head to the point I do have tears flowing down from my eyes. I would wipe it away and just tell myself, ” There is nothing I can do about it because I did what I could.” OH, I need to cross the street, cool, no cars coming in my direction. I am safe on another side of the sidewalk. As I continue with … “They’ll never understand what I am going through because they have it while I don’t.” and/or “Why can’t they just hear me out and try to work with me” and more often, I tell myself, “They don’t care so why should I waste my energy on them?” Then I have those moments of trying to puzzle solve the situation and more often than not, I’ve come back with talking it out with the person I have issues with. When I’m dealing with a group of people, so for years, I’ve always wanted to get on the stage and just scream at people. It will never happen because I do have stage fright but, all I wanted was for people to stop hurting other people and start opening their hearts and listening.

After wrestling with my own emotions, I would look up and I have reached my final spot and that is normally the 2 and half miles mark. Honestly, any mile marker that I’ve reached is normally when everything shifted underneath me. I tap the local Zoo sign that I’ve achieved reaching that goal. That brought a smile to my face and at that point, I didn’t give a frack what other people were thinking when I tapped the sign. I succeeded. I felt happy. I have reached my goal.

As I was getting ready to turn my body 90 degrees and walk on, I snapped out of the deep emotions I was in and took a deep breath. As I finished turning fully, I was facing people who were walking behind me who would smile and/or say their hello but all I could give was a smile. As a walker for years, I’ve picked up a habit that whenever someone walks past me, I just tip my head as my hello. I tend to have many misunderstandings but whenever I am with my child, they would translate what strangers normally say ranging from, “Hello, how are you?”, “Beautiful day” to “Hello Ma’am” to some random comment that happened at that moment.

From that point on, I would lift my phone to start texting random people so that I can throw random thoughts to spark a conversation and it goes from there. I would look around my surroundings even though, I have been doing that already. I would hear car honking at other cars, or sirens going off rushing to either chase someone or rescue them from whatever situation they’re in. Cars have their windows down and just BLAST music so loud that I can actually understand what music categories they’re listening. Birds chirping off somewhere nearby. There was one time I heard an owl hoot and I halted immediately and then went “Whoa! I cannot believe I heard that” Then I started looking for it but I wasn’t successfully finding it. There was one town that did rock painting and they would hide the beautiful rocks. I find myself having fun hunting those. There were days when I would pick up my speed to see if I could get a faster time as I timed myself. I find something to play if the mood strikes. Sometimes, I just mellowed out and just taking in the scenery. There are time to time, I would stop in and say hello to my hearing friends and check in to see how they were doing.

Before reaching the house, I would wind down my speed so I could allow my body to get ready to rest and bring the heart rate down. This is when I can really pay attention to my body, and I want to say that I had been paying attention through-out but slowing down seems to increase sensations throughout the body. I tend to feel sore but it is a good sore. My whole body feels light and relaxed. My head gets this little buzzing mixture of blood pumping, alert, the sense of accomplishment of reaching the goal, refreshed, and ready for whatever comes my way. There is a sense of tiredness from walking. It is not exhausting like ” I am SO tired from lack of sleep ” but more like I need a quick moment of sitting down and having water to drink then I’m back up and ready to go type of tired. I normally feel a sense of connection to myself like I’m more closer to me than I was an hour earlier. I feel more calmer and lighter to myself. People seem to be more happier to talk with me whenever I’m in that state of mind and I enjoy being around positive people. I also find myself little more in the center of myself whenever I’m around negative people and I feel I make more better decisions whenever I’m in that mental state.

That is free magic that is available to you daily.

I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoy writing this. Thank you.