If I Don’t Dare, Who Will?

School: Where the Limits Were Decided

The first “no” came quietly. “Drop French. Focus on extra English instead.”

It wasn’t advice. It wasn’t encouragement. It was a decision made about my life, without me.

Because what they really meant was this: You’re Deaf. You’ll struggle. You don’t deserve the same chances.

While hearing students were free to stretch themselves with new subjects, I was pushed into extra English lessons as though my Deafness automatically made me “behind,” as though the only future for me was catching up, never moving ahead.

It wasn’t just about French. It was about possibility.

Hearing children were free to try. To test themselves. To fail and learn. Deaf children were told their limits before they even began.

I remember sitting there, stomach twisting, realising: I am not being taught. I am being managed. Controlled. My horizon had already been cut short; not by my ability, but by their imagination.

And that hurt in a way I didn’t yet have words for.

I was being told: don’t dare.

Don’t try. Don’t step where Deaf children aren’t expected to stand.

But even as fear took root, another thought began to burn: If I don’t dare, who will?

Being One of the Few

Mainstream school meant I was one of the very few Deaf students. And that meant every day was a reminder: you don’t belong.

Teachers spoke to hearing children as if their futures stretched to the sky. Doctors, engineers, leaders.

For us, it was whispered differently. Something “steady.” Something “realistic.”

A future already translated into smaller dreams.

I hated it.

I hated the way pity was dressed up as care.

I hated the way every Deaf child was treated as though ambition would be dangerous for us, as though striving too high would only end in failure.

But hatred wasn’t the only thing I carried. There was fear.

A fear so sharp it followed me everywhere: What if they’re right? What if failure is inevitable, and no matter how hard I fight, I end up proving them correct?

That fear of failure ate me alive. It wasn’t motivation. It was a shadow that haunted every step.

Fighting Two Languages Without a First

That’s why, when they told me to drop French, I refused.

It wasn’t just stubbornness. It was defiance. It was me screaming: You will not decide who I get to be.

But the truth nobody saw was that I was already drowning.

I was born Deaf. Given a cochlear implant. Raised in a hearing family. But never taught BSL.

Never told it was a complete language; my language.

So I had no foundation. No mother tongue to hold me steady.

English was my only option, but it never felt like mine. Every page was a battlefield. Every sentence cut me open with confusion. I cried over books until the tears blurred the words.

And then I added French. A brand-new language stacked on top of the fragments of the first. It was like trying to build a cathedral on sand.

But I wouldn’t stop. Because stopping would mean surrendering to the future they had already written for me.

The Loneliness of Effort

That choice cost me everything.

While classmates laughed at lunch, I sat alone with my dictionary. While they built memories, I built silence. While they floated through homework, I clung to words until my hands hurt.

They built friendships. I built isolation.

Nobody knew how much I cried. Nobody knew the humiliation of nodding along when I had no idea what was being said. Nobody knew the shame of carrying an invisible exhaustion that never let up.

I carried it inside, because I didn’t have the words to let it out. And so it crushed me from within.

Proving Them Wrong

And yet, the results came. English GCSEs completed two years early. French with an A*. Nine A*s, an A, and a B overall.

On paper: perfection. To the world, I was a miracle. Teachers clapped. Parents smiled. The system congratulated itself for “supporting” me.

But paper doesn’t show the cost.

It doesn’t show the tears that soaked my pillow.

It doesn’t show the humiliation of pretending to follow when I didn’t.

It doesn’t show the loneliness of being left out of every conversation, every group, every moment of ease.

The Anger That Stayed

Everyone else saw triumph. I felt anger.

• Anger that my victories were bought with my childhood.

• Anger that I was forced into survival mode before I was even old enough to understand it.

• Anger that pity never left that even when I “won,” I was still looked at as less.

And that is what nobody realises: even when Deaf children succeed, we lose. Because success is never freedom. It is survival disguised as triumph.

A Levels: Perfection at Any Cost

By the time I finished school, I thought I had silenced their doubts. But Sixth Form made it clear: proving yourself once doesn’t release you. It only raises the stakes.

For hearing students, A Levels were a challenge.

For me, they felt like a death sentence.

The First Breakdown

From the first day, I heard the whispers: “A Levels are brutal. People drop out all the time.”

And I panicked.

If GCSEs had already taken everything, what would A Levels destroy?

Within weeks, I was breaking down in toilet cubicles. Shaking. Crying. Fighting to breathe.

Lessons were bullets of sound that tore past me before I could catch them. Side comments, jokes, whispers; all gone in the wind of a world I couldn’t hold.

My notebooks were graveyards of broken thoughts: half-sentences, arrows, unfinished fragments I stitched together alone at night.

And what did I have? Not an interpreter. Not real access. Just teaching assistants. Hearing adults who couldn’t sign, who didn’t understand me, who filled the seat but not the gap.

It was called “support.” But it felt like abandonment.

Imagine drowning, with someone watching from the shore, holding the lifejacket and refusing to throw it.

The Perfection Trap

And still, I couldn’t fail. Not once. Not ever.

Because if I slipped, they would blame my Deafness. They would nod and say the system had been right.

They would pat me on the shoulder and call it “expected.”

So I fought harder. Four A Levels. Four A*s.

It wasn’t ambition. It was terror.

That meant sixteen-hour days. Falling asleep on textbooks. Cancelling weekends. Cutting off friendships before they could grow.

To others, I was the quiet one, the serious one. But beneath the surface, I was simply terrified.

Terrified of proving them right.

Isolation as a Lifestyle

By then, loneliness wasn’t a phase. It was my life.

Lunches eaten in silence, surrounded by highlighters. Invitations declined until they disappeared. Study groups that were locked away in conversations too fast, too messy, too uncaptioned to enter.

There is a silence that feels peaceful. And there is a silence that feels like erasure. I lived in the second one.

So I chose solitude. Because solitude, at least, didn’t sting with the reminder of everything I would never have.

The Cost of Success

And yes I did it again. Four A*s.

On paper, another miracle. Another triumph. Another system congratulating itself.

But what nobody saw was me curled on the floor at night, body trembling with panic attacks. Nobody saw the exhaustion that left me hollow. Nobody saw the numbness that made clapping sound like knives.

Yes, I had the grades. But I had no joy. No friends. No belonging. No life outside of survival.

Only scars wrapped up as success.

Why I Couldn’t Go Straight to University

On paper, I was unstoppable. Four A*s. A perfect record.

But I couldn’t. I was broken.

Because I had grown up without a language that belonged to me. Because I had been one of the few, always doubted, always pitied. Because I had fought every day against a system that dressed abandonment as “support.”

Because I had lived my life under the crushing shadow of failure, and perfection had already cost me everything.

By the end of A Levels, there was nothing left to give.

So while my peers packed their bags for freshers’ week, I stayed behind. Not because I lacked ambition. Not because I didn’t want it.

But because I had already bled myself dry to get this far.

University would have been another battlefield. And I was still lying wounded on the ground.

The Gap: Work Before University

So I took the safer route. Apprenticeships. Work experience. Digital roles. Council offices.

I wanted to believe the workplace would be different. That once I left school, adults would know better. That professionalism would mean respect. That here, finally, ability would matter more than labels.

But instead, the mask cracked even deeper.

In meetings, colleagues would laugh as I asked for clarification, muttering under their breath: “She’s slow again.” When I brought an interpreter, people avoided my eyes completely; speaking to them instead, as though I was invisible.

One manager told me, straight-faced, that having an interpreter “wasn’t fair on others” because I was “getting extra help.”

Another suggested I shouldn’t be in meetings at all if I couldn’t keep up. More than once, I caught the snide comment: “Does the interpreter just do her work for her?”

And there were the cruelties nobody ever writes down: The laughter behind my back when I misheard a joke. The way my “mistakes” were remembered long after others’ were forgotten.

The sudden silence when I walked into the staffroom; proof enough I had been the punchline. And the patronising smiles that said, you’re lucky to be here, as though my place wasn’t earned but handed out of pity.

I worked harder than anyone else. But underneath it all was the suffocating truth: the bar for Deaf people had already been lowered.

We weren’t expected to rise. We weren’t expected to lead. We were tolerated in entry-level roles, boxed into admin tasks, but never truly imagined at the top.

That was the wound that cut the deepest. Not just exclusion, but containment. A ceiling built into the system.

A constant reminder: This far, but no further.

The Breaking Point

Every insult. Every doubt. Every dismissal. It stacked up, brick by brick, until it felt like a wall closing in.

It didn’t matter that I had top GCSEs. It didn’t matter that I had four A*s at A Level. It didn’t matter how many hours I poured into proving myself.

The message was relentless: We don’t see you as equal. We don’t even see you as capable.

And in that moment, something shifted in me.

For years, I had fought to survive inside their limits; working harder, being perfect, never slipping. But I finally understood: the system was never going to make space for me. If I wanted space, I would have to carve it open myself.

So I asked myself: What is the one door they believe Deaf people cannot walk through?

The answer was obvious: law.

I had already seen enough in workplaces to know how dangerous ignorance of the law was for people like me. I had seen colleagues get away with comments that would never have been tolerated if directed at someone else.

I had seen Deaf employees passed over for promotion, silenced in meetings, trapped in roles with no way up. I had felt the sting of knowing rights on paper were useless if nobody enforced them.

Law was a profession Deaf people were almost never seen in, not because we couldn’t, but because the system never expected us to. Choosing law was me daring myself to go where they thought we didn’t belong.

Yes, I knew it would hurt. I knew it would cost me again; sleepless nights, exhaustion, the weight of isolation.

But what was the alternative? To stay silent? To let them win?

I thought of the Deaf children coming after me, being told their futures were “smaller,” managed instead of believed in.

And I asked myself: If I don’t dare, who will? If I don’t go into the places they said we couldn’t, who will show it can be done?

I wasn’t claiming to be a role model. But why should Deaf people be denied the chance to see themselves at the table, in the courtroom, in power?

So I made my decision.

University would not just be study. It would be my weapon. And law would be my battleground.

Six Years of Fire

What came next was not a student life. It was a war.

Six years.

Six years of full-time work by day, full-time law by night.

Six years of commuting, exhaustion, collapsing into bed with textbooks still open.

Six years of dragging myself through lectures without true access, relying on “support” that never bridged the gap.

While my peers drank through freshers’ week, I worked late shifts. While they revised in study groups, I studied alone. While they slept, I was still at my desk, eyes burning, hands trembling, pushing through case law in a language that was never mine to begin with.

Every assignment was a fight. Every exam was survival. Every grade had to scream defiance: I belong here. I will not be erased.

And in the end, I walked out with a First Class Law Degree.

Not luck. Not charity. Not a miracle. But the result of years of pain, grit, and refusal to bow to the silence.

That degree was more than paper. It was proof. Proof that Deaf people can take the spaces the system says we cannot. Proof that ceilings can be cracked. Proof that every laugh behind my back, every lowered expectation, every patronising smile had been wrong.

It was the fire they gave me, turned into fuel.

And even if it cost me, even if it left scars, I had done what they said could not be done.

I had claimed the space.

From Law to Leadership

Walking across the stage to collect my First Class Law Degree should have felt like victory. But instead, it felt like defiance.

Because I knew the truth: this was never meant to happen. Not for someone like me. Deaf children are rarely pictured in law. We are told it’s “too academic,” “too verbal,” “too ambitious.”

And yet, I had clawed my way through; not because the system made space, but because I refused to shrink to the size it gave me.

That certificate in my hand wasn’t proof of inclusion. It was proof of survival. Proof that I had bled for a place others walked into freely.

And standing there, I realised: I couldn’t stop here. If I did, nothing would change. The next Deaf child would still be told “drop French.”

Still be laughed at in meetings. Still be treated as charity, not as potential.

I had fought too hard just to prove one person wrong. I wanted to change the system that made the fight inevitable in the first place.

That’s why I chose the MBA. Because law gave me armour, but strategy gives me tools.

Because if the world keeps building systems without us, then I need to be in the room where those systems are designed.

Why DeafMetrix Exists

DeafMetrix wasn’t born from theory. It was born from scars.

It exists because I know what it feels like to cry in a school toilet between lessons, terrified of failing before I’d even started. It exists because I know what it feels like to sit in a workplace meeting where your interpreter is mocked and you are erased. It exists because I know what it feels like to give up friendships, parties, ease: just to prove you’re capable of what should never have been in question.

DeafMetrix is the answer to a question that haunted me through every stage of my life: Why should we be forced to break ourselves just to be seen as equal?

It is not a consultancy that sells “awareness.” It is not a company that makes leaders feel good about bare minimum. It is a Deaf-led challenge to the systems that quietly fail us exposing the cracks, the ceilings, the costs no one dares to count.

Because here is the truth: exclusion is not an accident. It is architecture. It is designed into hiring, into classrooms, into technology, into boardrooms.

And if it can be designed, it can be redesigned.

The Mission

So now, as I stand with both a First Class Law Degree and an MBA in progress, I am building what I never had: a structure for real change.

DeafMetrix exists because:

• I will not let another Deaf student sit alone at lunch, drowning in exhaustion, believing their future has already been decided.

• I will not let another Deaf worker be told they are “lucky to be here” while their talent is left to wither at entry-level.

• I will not let another generation grow up without Deaf leaders at the table, in the courtroom, in the boardroom.

I am not claiming to be a role model. But I am refusing to be silent.

Because silence is what nearly broke me. And silence is what keeps unjust systems standing.

DeafMetrix is not just a company. It is rebellion. It is my answer to every laugh, every dismissal, every lowered expectation.

It is proof that Deaf leadership is not just possible; it is inevitable, if we dare to fight for it.

If I don’t dare, who will?

And I turn it now to you: If you don’t listen, if you don’t act, if you don’t change then who pays the price?