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.
