26th December, 2024 | Narita, Tokyo, Japan
Narita Station unfolded like a half-remembered dream: quiet, shimmering and unreal.
Somewhere between Terminal 1 and the North Exit, I lost my orientation — direction blurred, language dissolved, time unknown. Fluorescent lights painted the tracks in clear white, turning metal into bone.
The chill of December crept through the gaps in my hoodie as I leaned against a pillar, far from the yellow tactile line that sliced the platform like a warning: stay back.
Headphones on, eyes closed, I let the world dissolve into music — my private sanctuary from a reality I’d been dodging for a few days.
My parent’s voice looped: You didn’t try hard enough.
Next to me, my friend buzzed with first-time wonder, her camera clicking like punctuation to her gasps of delight. She was seeing Japan for the first time. I was seeing it for the twelfth — but this time, with more emotional baggage than luggage.
I didn’t notice the train glide in, didn’t hear the doors hiss open, didn’t see her step aboard.
“Tia! Come inside –the door’s closing!”
Eyes snapping open, I looked up.
Oh, shit.
I stood at the threshold – between past and future. Between failure and faith. Between the person Melbourne tried to break and the one Tokyo might help rebuild.
20th December, 2024 | Tooronga, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
One unread email.
I was on my bed in an oversized T-shirt, laptop on my legs, half-watching a show when my eyes caught the words Job Offer.
Not Thank you for your time. Not Unfortunately. Not “We regret to inform you…”
Just: Thank you for your interest in the Junior Designer position at our company.
My chest was already reacting — tight, like I’d sprinted, even though I hadn’t moved.
Two years. That’s how long I’d been trying. Applying, rewriting, and hoping.
Interviews that felt promising. Rejections that came quickly, or not at all. You learn to manage hope like a muscle — stretch it just enough, but never too far.
My finger hovered over the mouse.
Click.
22nd December, 2024 | Tooronga, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
Two days later, I walked into the office.
I wore my best attempt at polished casual: brand-new, painfully expensive jeans, a tailored blazer, and a white blouse that felt too crisp to move in. My makeup was soft, deliberate — just enough to say I tried.
On the tram ride, I ran through talking points from my portfolio. The clever phrasing I’d practiced. The highlights I hoped I wouldn’t forget.
But underneath that, questions stirred:
What will a day here actually look like?
Will I be seen, or just supervised?
Will there be space to grow — or just space to sit?
The office was unsettlingly clean. Sitting at the table, I felt like I’d wandered onto the set of Severance, where work and identity are surgically split.
It was the same disorienting limbo I’d known for years, the feeling of straddling parallel worlds: one hearing, one d/Deaf.
In this office, I was fluent, competent, and smiling on cue. But somewhere behind that polish was the part of me that strained to lipread, to interpret coded tones of voice, to stay alert for the moments I’d be left out without anyone noticing.
Across the desk sat the hiring manager — a white man in his mid-40s with cologne so overpowering I nearly had to stifle a cough. He reminded me of Mr. Milchick. Same eerie essence.
Politeness stretched over detachment as he slid the offer letter across the desk. “We’d love to have you on board,” he said.
I looked down at the piece of paper, fighting a knot of anxiety in my stomach. For the first time, I didn’t want to just go along with what was expected. I didn’t want to bury the question that had followed me into every job search, every interview, every professional interaction.
“If you’re hiring someone with a disability,” I asked, pausing, “how would you accommodate their needs?”
He blinked twice. His laugh was dry, short and dismissive –the kind people use to bury discomfort.
“Why should I accommodate them?” he scoffed. “I don’t have the time, energy, or money for that.”
Somewhere down the hallway, a printer hummed. Someone chuckled. The man’s fingers tapped on the table like nothing had happened.
I looked down at my white sneakers, then met his gaze.
“I’m deaf,” I replied.
His face froze for half a second — a micro-expression of surprise, maybe regret. But then the corporate mask snapped back into place.
To be fair, I hadn’t mentioned it on my resume. Not because I was hiding it. But because I wanted him to see me first as a human, first as capable.
I wanted him to hire me for my abilities, not for the disability I didn’t create.
The change in mood was palpable. In that instant, I had a flashback.
Previous interviews. Other rooms. Emails rejecting me with, “We regret to inform you…” backing it up with my deafness as their concern to bear rather than support. Silence from follow-up emails.
The polite nod, the practiced smile, and the quick shift in tone — people no longer assessing my skills but calculating risk.
They stop seeing what you bring. They start seeing what they might have to deal with.
This is ableism. The kind that never gets reported — but always gets felt.
According to a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, people with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed — not due to lack of skill, but because they’re viewed through the lens of limitation rather than potential.
I’ve seen it firsthand. The assumptions people make about me based on my disability. How my skills are viewed through a lens of doubt rather than possibility. I’ve seen my capabilities reduced to questions of what I can’t do instead of what I can. The assumption that disability equals incapacity is pervasive and damaging.
All of those things I have seen, not only in the interviews, but throughout my lived experience. Being glared at on the bus for sitting in a disabled seat — because my disability isn’t visible. Or being the last one picked for sports, not because I lacked ability, but because no one thought to include me in the instructions. People backing off when I tell them I’m deaf after introduction. Or trying to mimic sign language with exaggerated, mocking gestures — not to communicate, but to entertain themselves.
In the office, silence stretched between me and the hiring manager. I didn’t need sound to understand. I could feel it.
When you’re deaf, you rely on your eyes more than your hearing. And what I saw was this: a slow recalculation. The quiet retreat. A rejection – not of skill, but of inconvenience.
He opened his mouth, but I cut in first. “Thank you for your time.”
No over-explanation. No guilt. No, “I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable…”
But as I left the room, my legs trembled — like my body understood something my mind hadn’t caught up with.
It wasn’t just one bad interview. It wasn’t just one ignorant man or the many others before him. It was the system, the design industry, that failed to make space.
23rd December, 2024 | Dromana, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
The next day, I lost myself in the burn of oil, the hiss of the wok, and the clang of plates.
Pre-Christmas chaos. Full house.
I had the longest shift at the Thai restaurant in Dromana, the seaside suburb of Melbourne — the kind of night where your hands move faster than your thoughts.
I tied my apron the way I always did — looped once, tucked in, knotted tight — but the action felt mechanical, like muscle memory borrowed from someone else. The familiar scent of lemongrass and chilli clung to the kitchen, but I barely registered it.
My body moved between tables, smiled when required, and bowed my head politely when someone waved for my attention.
I carried three plates at a time without really feeling their weight. Took orders like a ghost — present enough to nod, and invisible enough to be forgotten five seconds later.
I didn’t have the space to feel hurt. Didn’t have room to process what happened. I had dishes to clear.
My hands didn’t stop moving.
Wipe. Serve. Clear. Repeat.
24th December, 2024 | Tooronga, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
Christmas Eve brought its usual family soundtrack.
“You should think about a stable career. Design isn’t secure, is it?”
“Why are you wasting money on a workshop? Japan? For what?”
“You’re not trying hard enough.”
“You’re just avoiding reality.”
They said it all with concern. But what I heard was: You’re not enough.
What they didn’t see was what I carried:
The job I walked away from. The rejection I didn’t let break me. The exhaustion of always having to explain why I deserved to be in the room.
25th December, 2024 | Nadi Airport, Fiji
A tight, knitted black top. Grey sweatpants. A black carry-on. 32°C heat and the humidity of the Pacific.
A fashion of both comfort and crime.
“You look like Gollum,” my friend gasped when she saw me at the gate, arriving after her on the flight from Melbourne. I glanced in the mirror.
She wasn’t wrong. Dark circles. Dead eyes. Hair in a half-hearted bun. Sweat in all the wrong places.
At the cafe near the boarding gate, I messaged the host of the writing workshop in Japan I was about to attend — spilling all my fear and uncertainty.
Had I made the right decision?
My bag sat against my leg. Inside: notebooks, pens, and fragments of thoughts I hadn’t had space to name.
I called this trip my creative recovery. It sounded more productive than burned out and barely holding my shit together.
It was a half-joke, a half-prophecy then.
Now, it’s a lifeline.
26th December, 2024 | In transit
On the plane to Japan, my friend snoozed soundly, her head on my shoulder. I couldn’t sleep.
I didn’t tell her about the interview, since I didn’t want to ruin her excitement. I wrote in my journal instead.
But the question stayed with me. The one I asked. The one I’d carried from interview to interview. The one that made hiring managers squirm, smile nervously, or move on too quickly.
How will you accommodate someone with a disability?
I’ve sat in rooms where I had to ask for the accommodations that should have been offered, where I had to prove that my needs weren’t unreasonable, where the simplest requests — like ensuring captions in a meeting or providing a quiet space — felt like a burden rather than a right.
One day, someone will answer that with compassion, not cost. Until then, I’ll keep asking.
8th February, 2025 | Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan
Oh, fu —
I flew down the stairs, breath short, phone screen glowing with directions — Platform 3. I was about to miss the last train to the airport.
I barely made it inside the train, holding my breath, before the door hissed behind me.
— ck. I made it!
The train rocked gently as it slipped through the rails of Tokyo. Around me, sleepy tourists leaned on luggage while locals nodded off in silence.
I scrolled through the photos and messages on my phone — fragments of late-night karaoke, konbini runs, awkward language mishaps that turned into friendships.
Somehow, two months in Japan had become a lifetime of moments.
I caught my reflection in the darkened window — older, maybe, or just more certain.
This version of me wasn’t the one who arrived trembling on the edge of a platform in Narita. She was someone who had asked hard questions, of others and of herself — and had finally been ready for the questions.
She had come to understand that hardships aren’t here to build her into some flawless version of success — they’re here to shape her, to soften what needed humbling and sharpen what needed courage.
For two months, I had searched. Not for places: for pieces of myself.
Japan didn’t give me certainty. It gave me clarity.
Then I remembered my workshop host’s reply back in Fiji: I have so much faith that the giant leap you take will land you in a place you will be proud of.
And my friend’s enthusiasm when we arrived in Narita on the first day: if next year isn’t our year, then this moment is ours!
The station chime announced our final stop. I stood, grabbed my suitcase, and glanced down.
The yellow tactile line — that same warning from my first day — was there again between me and the next step.
This time though, I wasn’t afraid of the gap. It didn’t feel like a boundary. It felt like a beginning.
I took a deep breath, grabbed my suitcase and took the leap.
I wasn’t stuck in the past. I wasn’t racing toward the future.
I was already here.
And for once, that was enough.