moved

Ok... so I am now at deafadventures.wordpress.com This is where all new blogs have been, and will continue to be.

Mistakes

its amazing how everything is clear as day when you look back on it... the mistakes you have made, the pain you caused... the horror you feel. i am admitting, i have made so many mistakes. many of them so minor, forgetting to take the trash out, forgetting a homework assignment, little white lies. but the ones that cause me pain are the big ones, not seeming to respect the ones i love, not showing them the respect they deserve. lying to my friends, my family, my partner, and also myself. this time, learning to accept myself, it has more work, so much more work. i have more work to do, on myself and my relationships, because they are worth trying to save, trying to repair. i cant expect everyone around me to change for my benefit, but not change myself. i cant expect honesty if im not completely honest, i cant expect sanity if im not sane. there are so many days when i question my sanity, today is one of those days. i question my mental health, i question my intentions, my resolve, my faith, my life. i question if i am who i want to be, and when im not... why do i feel the need to just make it all appear that i am healthy and whole?
why do i need so many things, and yet i am unable to do them, unable to reciprocate, unable to enjoy, just unable? why do i let the world influence me in ways it shouldn't be able to? why do i fail at my goals... and seem to be ok with that?

why am i unable to explain, yes i am fine with being deaf, but what i miss most about having more (or some) db of hearing, is music... and how i need the music, how that is driving me to accept something i have never thought of accepting before. it isn’t the lack of sound, or the weird tickling on my ear drum with my hearing aids, but it is the lack of music. it is with my current levels of deafness, that are going no where but more profound, that music has no rhythm, no depth, it is just a garbled pot of noise... just as speech. that i can not accept... i have tried... and i just cant do it. i am so scared that by thinking about getting a cochlear implant, something i have said for years i would not do, because i am not broken, that i am going to be turning my back on my community. though i know that wont be the case... my mind, or my emotions, or my crazy self, is telling me that is the truth, that is what is happening, that is what my reality is... that thinking about it is a huge mistake, and doing it would be an even bigger one. but then i try, so desperately to listen to music, to have that connection i had before, that connection to something so much bigger than myself... and it just depresses me, even more. I have made so many mistakes, and I don’t want to make any more, I want to be an open and honest person, I want to be able to have the people that I love be open and honest with me. But am I able to do that while I do not accept myself fully for who I am, when I do not accept that although yes I am Deaf, and I know that I am not broken, and that I have a wonderful community to support me and to love me just for who I am... that I still want to hear music? That I may get a CI for that reason? Am I able to be open and honest with people without expressing that? Or is it lying by omission?

Am I able to be open and honest in my relationship without feeling I am less, or that I need to protect her for my insanity? Right now... no I am not... and I know that is my problem. I am not able to be open and honest, though I am working on it, just as she is working on accept me for the Deaf person that I am, that I will continue to be, instead of a broken hearing person. I have realized, so much in the last day, I need to be open and honest, because that is what I want for those around me, to be open and honest. I need to be able to show respect, especially to those I love, and I need to learn to respect myself, and my decisions, my thoughts, my desires. Just as I need to respect the people that I love, and show them that I respect them, in the words that I say, in the movement of my hands, in the words that I right, I also need to respect myself and acknowledge that yes, I am deaf, but I do desire to hear some. Though that is a scary thought for me, because I have worked so hard to accept myself as being deaf, I terribly miss music. So here I am, opening up... I am going for a CI evaluation on May 2nd. My hopes for the CI, that I can finally hear music, not only feel the base tones, but hear music. That I become less of a frustrated person when it comes to dealing with hearing people, that I never loose sight of my Deaf community, that I learn to become a more respectful person, that I learn to be open and honest with those that I love. I know many of these dreams have nothing to do with the CI itself, but I hope this admission, I hope it leads me towards my other dreams.

Someone Elses Language

Its something most people don’t think about… the language that you use every day, the language that you grew up learning… does that make it your own language? In my case, no it doesn’t. My language is a visual language, my language is American Sign Language, ASL, even though I was deprived of it growing up, it is still my language. The language I learned growing up, the language I was forced to use until I finally decided at the age of 17 that I was going to learn what was rightfully my language, was someone else’s language. It was the language of my parents, my siblings, my family, my neighbors, but it was never really my language.

It has always, and will always be foreign to me, the way the words form in your mouth, how the air coming out changes ever so slightly, the vibration in your throat changing, its intriguing, yes, but it is still foreign, alien, because I am Deaf. I cannot hear the language, I cannot form it “correctly” and yet, every so often, I can understand it. The language I was exposed to from birth is someone else’s language, but not mine. I remember growing up, and knowing that people were trying to talk to me, but not really understanding what talking meant… seeing peoples lips move, knowing they had a reason, a rhyme to them, but being left out of their circle, their private club. I wanted to speak like them, to make sounds come out of my lips, and have people understand them… it seemed so easy… for everyone else… but to me… the task seemed impossible. I remember starting speech therapy, thinking it was playtime, but soon got bored, because the lady moved her lips just like everyone else. I would sit with one hand on her throat, the other one mine, try to get them to be the same… but they never were. Soon, those afternoon meetings just made me tired, cranky and in desperate need of a nap. I hated going, I would cry and cry and cry, hoping it would get my mom to understand I didn’t want to go. What were worse then those speech therapy lessons, the trips to the men with no names… I wasn’t really sure what they did, what they were for, but I knew they would look in my ears, put these things on my head, and press buttons, and that I didn’t like it. I was never sure what I was supposed to be doing during those exams… but I remember hating them… though the exact details escape me.

One day, I was around 5, and in kindergarten, in the “special” class, because I had very little speech skills, I remember sitting at the table, watching my speech therapist… and she said something, and I understood what she meant… I said it back… wrong, but I tried. I finally began to recognize the word mom on her lips, something I could do with my sisters’ lips, and my own mom’s lips, but on someone else’s lips, that had never happened before. I started to make “progress” we used pictures to help me understand, but never any signs, only pictures.  Eventually I could speak so most people could understand me, even if it meant that I had to think hard about what I was going to say, and how to say it, and also meaning that I have missed half of what someone else was saying. I prided myself in this for a long time, because I could be understood, even if I couldn’t understand someone else.

Then the first day I was really exposed to my language is a day I will never forget. I was a senior in high school, had never been allowed to meet anyone who was like me. I finally decided I was going to take a class at the local community college in American Sign Language, something my parents desperately didn’t want for me, but I wanted to at least try it on and see if it fit. I knew I didn’t belong in the hearing world, but I also wasn’t sure if I belong in the Deaf world. I walked into class the first Monday, scared beyond belief. I knew I was going to be the only high school student in class, and I vowed I wouldn’t tell anyone I was still in High School, I still very much wanted to be accepted. I knew a few signs here and there, I could fingerspell, I knew some basic phrases, but I was far from a fluent communication, I was far from where I was with the English language. I walked into class, there were a few other students already there; they were outwardly excited and nervous, talking non-stop. I was invited into a group of 4 students, and I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t understand what was going on, with all of them talking at once. So I went to my fall back plan, I smiled and nodded a lot. I noticed before anyone else, a man had walked in accompanied by a woman, and they were signing back and forth easily. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I went back to my group’s conversation… continuing to smile and nod, while being completely lost.

Shortly after, the man who had walked in flashed the lights, every one started looking around, but I went and sat down in a seat directly in the middle of the single row of desks. I knew why he had flashed the flights, and it seemed I was the only one who appreciated it. The woman who had accompanied him was his interpreter; my teacher was Deaf! He introduced himself, and asked each of us to do the same. It was nearly impossible for me to catch anyone’s names in the class or any of the information given about them, because I couldn’t stand in front of them one by one while they spoke. So I watched the interpreters fingers dance, I was amazed. When it was my turn to speak, I wasn’t quite sure what I was suppose to say. I knew I needed to state my name, but other then that, I wasn’t quite sure. So I concentrated and said, “Hi my name is Ash”. Everyone was looking at me, expecting more, but I couldn’t give them the information that I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure what else I was suppose to divulge, people started to talk, and I became very embarrassed. The professor noticed right away what was going on, and instead of pointing me out, he just wrote the questions on the board. This had never happened to me before, no one had taken the time, without pointing out my hearing loss, to be sure that I understood. I was then able to answer the questions, people still looked at me funny, but we were all there to learn the same thing.

Though I knew the content of the first day, learning to finger spell our names, and introduce ourselves, I was never bored. On the contrary, I was entirely enamored with the idea of being able to communicate, not with my weakest sense, but with my hands and my eyes without missing out on sound. I had a distinct advantage in the class, I was already use to using my eyes to understand, or to try to understand, so my eyes didn’t get tired like the hearing students. We were learning to communicate, not talk, but to actually communicate, and I loved it. I was getting ready to leave the class that first night, when I noticed people were trying to talk to me, I turned around and asked them to repeat. They were asking me about my hearing aids, they were asking me about growing up, and why I chose now to learn ASL, they were genuinely curious, and not like many of the students in my High School, who were condescending about my deafness (though I heavily identified as hard of hearing, or a broken hearing person) but seemed to accept that I was a person just like them. The teacher also took me aside with his interpreter, and talked to me. He wanted to be sure that he hadn’t embarrassed me, he wanted to get to know me more, wanted to help me find my path into the world that should have been mine from the start. His wonderful interpreter had to interpret twice for us, being sure she said things in a manner that I could lipread, as well as interpreting his words, and my own. That first day, the day that changed my life for the better, the day I started the path to learn my language, this beautiful language without sound, but that dances to tell captivating stories.

After 5 years, I am still not fluent, but I have found my way home, to my language, my community, my people. I have been welcomed with open arms, and deeply loved. I have made wonderful friends, and I have learned so much more about myself in the process. I can express my thoughts and feelings without having to think so very hard to do so, without being criticized for the way my words come out, without having to wonder if I was using the correct words. I can also understand, not just a little bit, not just every few words and try and guess what people are trying to say, but actually understand. I am able to fully understand and appreciate my classes in school, the comedy of my friends, seeing my parents sign “I love you”. ASL has changed my life, my language, my life, my world. 

What have I lost?

A recent conversation with a friend made me think about what I have lost in my life, and inadvertently what I have gained... not possessions or money, but experiences... the experiences that I have both lost and gained by being raised Orally, and the impact that has had in my life. As a child and as a teen, I was never given the opportunity to be around others like me, others who couldn’t hear, let alone understand the sounds coming out of peoples mouths without straining to see what was being said... I lost that experience with people who truly understood what it was like to be me. I lost the experience to become truly fluent in a language, in a culture... it is coming to me now, as I immerse myself in My Deaf Culture, but I was always the odd ball out growing up... Yes I can speak, yes I can lipread, yes I can write (sometimes even eloquently) , but I was never given the chance to become fluent. I can not speak or understand with ease in English... even when writing, I make many mistakes, it takes effort, and I am always second guessing myself. When I sign, things are easier... even though I was denied that language growing up... but I do not try to fool myself or anyone around me... I am not a fluent signer... one day I hope to be, but as of right now, I am not.

I lost the ability to truly connect with people around me on a deep emotional level... I can look into someones eyes and see some of what they are feeling, but I could not, especially as a child, express my feelings, or understand how others were feeling... not because I didn’t want to, in fact, I wanted to badly, but I couldn’t... I didn’t understand, I couldn’t connect, I really couldn’t communicate, in the purest sense of the word. I am learning to now... but those years before... I couldn’t. The one way I had found as a teen  to feel like I was “connecting” to someone else, was promiscuity. That caused many issues in my life... but that is one experience i have “gained” that of being called a slut... and of knowing it was true. I felt people only liked me if I were to “give” them something, and humans are pack animals... we need to feel liked, we need to feel as if we belong... and this was the only way I knew... when I was, honestly, being a slut... I was not the weird deaf girl, I was not the girl who couldn’t pronounce words, or who said what too many times... I was just a girl... who someone “cared” enough about to have sex with... and there... I went very wrong.

I hated myself, I was afraid of myself, I hated my deafness... and so much more about me, and what I had to do every day just to get by. I plastered a smile on my face, I always said yes to everything, but all I wanted to do every day, was to be out of this hell I called my life. I wanted to be done with speech therapy, I wanted to be done hating myself, I wanted to be this picture perfect person that my parents, and I, thought I should be... straight A student (I was close), hearing, popular, etc... I wanted to be almost everything I wasn’t... when I wasn’t day dreaming about this other person, the person who I thought should exist... but didn’t... I was contemplating the ways I could kill myself, to get me out of this hell that was my existence... I tried... and it was how I knew  I was alive... because I could feel myself getting so close to death... then come back... only then did I know I was actually alive. To keep the feeling of being alive, I started to cut... because there was physical proof of my being alive... I could see the blood dripping from my wrists... from my legs, from my stomach... I could feel the pain of the razor, or what ever sharp instrument was handy, cutting into my skin, reminding me that I wasn’t a shimmer of life, but actually alive. 

I realize, I lost so many experiences, I really did... and most of what I “gained” experience wise was negative... the promiscuity, the speech therapy, the ostracization, the suicide attempts, the fear of being myself... how would my life have been different if I had been allowed to know ASL from the get go? To have a community of people like me? I may never know...

My life now is very different from my life growing up... change #1... most of the time... I am actually happy... the smile on my face isn’t plastered up... most of the time it is real. I  have met people just like me, who were raised to try and be as hearing as possible... but in reality... we were just deaf, and who like me, wonder what life would have been like if they had the chance to have their natural language. I have met people who have had childhoods very different from mine... and none of them regret their childhoods, or wonder what they have lost from being raised with ASL...

For other deafies... What is your story? where do you lay on the path between deaf and Deaf? When did you find your Deaf identity, or have you found it yet? It took me 22 years... but I have found mine, and my home in the Deaf Community...

For parents of deaf children... which path will you take? The oral road? maybe CI or HA? So your children will be come... “hearing”? just as my parents did? or will you take the path where your child has the chance to grow up having connections with people? Where they do not have to feel they are less because of an ability they can not control? 

For hearing people... what have you learned?

No more energy

So I’m running out of energy… I’m becoming drained… and all I want to do is sleep… why you might ask… the hearing world is getting me down. The hearing world… treating me like a second class citizen… treating me like I am someone to be pitied… someone who needs to be helped… someone who can’t do anything for themselves… that is why. I am not a second class citizen, I am a full, happy (normally), healthy (normally) Deaf person, I may communicate differently then you (the hearing world)… but that doesn’t mean that I am less than you. I am tired of the audists getting everything that they desire, younger ages for CI implantation, taking services out of the hands of the ASL geared Deaf Schools, and putting “organizations” such as AG Bad in charge of them… but still having the Deaf School pay for them. I am tired of going to the store, and having the cashier look at me like I am a blibbering idiot because when they talk to me… I sign to them. I am tired of having to use my voice all the time at work, exhaust my energy lipreading at work, then if something, ANYTHING goes wrong… its blame the Deaf Girl. Its no wonder I didn’t accept who I was for such a long time… why I tried to live in the hearing world, why I tried to convince myself I was a broken hearing person, and Hearing Aids would help “fix” me… its no wonder I thought I needed to be fixed… the world around us shows us this… tells us we need to be their idea of perfect.

Its days like today that I wish, so much that I could travel to Eyeth, a place where I would be accepted for who I am, for what my ears can and can’t do… for the language I use… and for my place among the Deaf Community. The thing that makes things harder, at least for me, isn’t only complete strangers giving me the “death face” as I like to put it (the look on someone’s face when they find out you are Deaf, and you can just see their ignorance and audist natures shining through, almost as if someone has died, because being Deaf is obviously the WORST thing in the world) but when that “death face” is seen on someone’s face that you care about, say a sibling, a spouse, and heaven forbid, a parent, it makes things so much harder.

I grew up oral, with moderate loss, that we were told would get worse over time, but my audiograms stayed steady. I have NEVER been able to completely understand what was being said to me verbally, lipreading helped, but it isn’t a substitution for an accessible language. I had speech therapy 3 times a week, for an hour or two… I hated every moment of it, I wanted to be a normal kid, one who could understand what her teachers were saying, who didn’t make a fool out of herself when she misunderstood her “friends” saying things in school, one who understand her art teacher wanted a “new sculpture” not a “glue sculpture”, one who didn’t get made fun of in school because of how she talked, one who wasn’t always picked last to play on teams in gym class, the one who didn’t get stuck with the drums in music class, because everyone else could sing right… I wanted to be normal.

I remember on the first day of school, when I started kindergarten, I could say 3 or 4 words… and my mom had to go into the classroom and tell my teacher I wasn’t stupid… but “Ash has a little problem with hearing” no one, including my teacher understood me… I was struggling to read my teachers lips (not that I understood I was doing it, but that’s what was happening) to understand what I needed to do. This is what happened every year of school, then when I was 8, I thought things would change, I thought that I would be able to talk “normally” that somehow I would be able to instantly understand everything, why… well I was getting this “magical” thing called Hearing Aids, because the state finally agreed to pay for them. So I got them… and things did not change, I tried really hard, I tried to understand what was being said, I tried to become this “normal” kid… but then at school I was bullied because of my hearing aids, because I still talked funny, because I still couldn’t understand people; and now, any time I started a new class, my mom would walk in, and inform the teacher that I had hearing aids. I thought this would make everything better, instead it made things worse.

By middle school I was no longer even wearing my HA’s at school, I would leave the house, put them in my pocket, and be on my way. The only time I wore them were at student teacher conferences, where I would have my hair down, so no one could see them, I was put into “special” classes because everyone around me still through I was stupid.

 In High School, I decided that I would just learn things on my own, I was still going to speech therapy, but how much is speech therapy going to help a person who had been in it since she was 3? I wasn’t allowed to meet anyone who was deaf, anyone who signed, because that would hinder my speaking ability… but finally in my senior year of high school, I told my parents in a not so eloquent way, that I would no longer be taking speech therapy, instead I would attend the local community college and learn sign language. I decided, hey this is college, people won’t make fun of me for my hearing aids, I can wear them. So first day of class, I walked in, I was by far the youngest person there, the professor, a wonderful Deaf man, walked in, and started signing away… I was BLOWN away. That first day he had an interpreter with him, so he could get to know us, what we wanted out of the class, without having to put so much effort into reading our lips or having to write everything down. Most people said they wanted to learn because they were fascinated with the language, when it came to me I said that I had never been allowed to learn, because my parents were always told that it would hinder how I spoke, that I would stop speaking, and my speech discrimination (understanding the words coming out of peoples mouths) would go down, but I wanted to learn so I could finally understand what was going on around me, and hopefully actually learn something. My professor asked me how I saw myself, and I said, a hearing person who has problems understanding what is going on, or Hearing Impaired… he looked at me, and told me flat out that I wasn’t a “broken hearing person”, and before that I had never really been able to put how I felt into words, or at least not succinctly, and that everything would be ok… at that point, I didn’t believe him. He spent so much more time with me than he did any of the other students, we would meet before class, after class, and he would teach me more about the culture, more about the language, and it was so wonderful realizing that I wasn’t a broken hearing person, I didn’t quite feel like I could claim the d/Deaf Identity yet, but I realized I had nothing to be ashamed about being me.

The next year I went off to college, and I couldn’t find ANYONE who signed, so I went back to feeling like I was broken, like I wouldn’t be accepted. My school, just as in High School, gave me no accommodations. I didn’t get a note taker, I didn’t get CART, I didn’t get an interpreter, I got an FM system that wouldn’t work with my Hearing Aids, so I had to use headphones… and still not be able to understand what was going on. Things didn’t change again for the better until I moved back to Colorado; back to the state I was born. I got a job fixing computers, what I had been doing since I was 11, and that still has me placed firmly in the Hearing world. I was realizing the sounds that I could hear were becoming fewer and farther between, and since I hadn’t had an audiogram since my sophomore year of high school (why should I they were always the same) I decided I would get one. This audiogram was a HUGE shock to me… my hearing was declining, I was in the severe to profound range now… that is why sounds all together stopped happening for me… now it made since. I decided I would give hearing aids another shot, but I didn’t have those unrealistic ideas that the 8 year old me did, I understood they would just amplify what I could hear, and that they may help with speech reading (lipreading with sound). I still wasn’t fond of them, but they did help me understand when someone walked in the door at work.

This was also about the time that I decided I wanted to try and find Deaf people again, but I still wasn’t quite ready to accept that I was even deaf. Through the magic of the internet, I was able to find people who actually understood, and I met a man who is now a deaf friend of mine, who has helped me, welcomed me with open arms, and has shown me again, that I am not a broken hearing person, but that I am a full Deaf person. The changes made in just a few months astounded even me. I went from saying that I was Hard of Hearing to just telling people that I was deaf. I was finally beginning to accept myself.

 4 months later, after a broken ear drum and severe ear infections, I got my hearing tested again, only to find out that I had more “deaf gain” as a friend of mine puts it. I thought it would have affected me more, but it didn’t. I still use my hearing aids, but only when I want to, only when I must. I am not nearly fluent in ASL, but I’m getting there, I am signing on a regular basis, and at school or doctors appointments, I do not voice, but I let the interpreter talk for me, its easier that way, its more comfortable that way. You may wonder why I told such a long story, its because I want people to know where I’m coming from, because only when we know where we have been can we really know where we are headed. I have changed so much in my life, I have changed from thinking of myself as a “broken hearing person” to thinking of myself as Hard of Hearing, to understanding that I am deaf, to finally, embracing my Deaf Identity. I use an interpreter at every chance that I can, because only then can I actually understand what is going on, at church, at school, at doctors appointments. I have many people to thank, many people who I have come to love, and a wonderful community (both hearing and Deaf) who are there to support me, but there are still days when I just wish that I could travel to Eyeth, that Eyeth was real, and that I didn’t have to worry about lipreading still, that I didn’t have to worry about trying to understand, or be understood, but where I could use my natural language all the time.

My family is slowly coming to understand that I am not this broken hearing person they have always though of me as, but I am a full Deaf person… but I still see them give me the “death face” from time to time, especially if I ask them to repeat what they have just said, or give up and just go sit by myself on the side lines, watching the world go on around me. I am still rooted in the hearing world for work, though, hopefully that will end up changing for me, with a new degree in progress, new work opportunities, I would love to be able to work where I don’t have to use my voice… and I know that day is coming… it just isn’t quite on the horizon yet. I wish that I could go back, not to change my past, because that helps make me who I am, but to thank those people whom I no longer have contact with, mainly my ASL professor, and tell them how my world has changed, and for the better, and what an impact they had on it. I am tired… but I am just tired of being in the hearing world where no one understands, I know not everyone in the hearing world is like this, but so many are… and it is exhausting.