& becoming more and more conscious of it.
i have a bilateral, sensorineural hearing loss (which is just a fancy, scientific way of saying i was born with a hearing loss in both of my ears). in my experience, people seem to have a much easier time understanding that people can gradually lose their hearing as they age, or that people can be born completely deaf. but here i am.
usually when i tell someone i can’t hear them, they start speaking louder. it makes sense, because you’d think that someone with a hearing loss would benefit from an increase in volume. but long story short, that ain’t it. many of us need clarity, not volume.
early on in my life, my audiograms didn’t quite show how bad my hearing really was, and i was without hearing aids for the first 17 years of my life. unknowingly, i began to rely on my ability to read lips in order to understand anyone from my friends and teachers, to characters on tv shows.
now that we’re in the midst of a pandemic and everyone is wearing a mask, a simple trip to the grocery store is a million times more exhausting. i’ve realized just how much i have come to depend on lip reading and it’s terrifying for me to think about going back to school where everyone will most likely be required to wear masks, and my classmates won’t know why i’m not partaking in their conversations.
i stay quiet because i know i’ll hear something wrong and completely derail the conversation. i stay quiet because my mind is still working to process what one person has said by the time another has started talking. and i stay quiet because i am tired. i’m tired of asking people to repeat themselves, just like i know they are tired of repeating.
it’s not that i expect everyone to understand exactly how i feel, but you don’t have to be hard of hearing to know what it’s like for someone to say “never mind” instead of just taking a second to fill you in on the joke everyone else is laughing at. it would be nice if everyone could just slow down a little. and be patient.
