I wasn't born deaf, I started to lose my hearing in my very early twenties. At that point I had been married to my hubby for 5 years and had two children (yeah I am an early starter!).
I currently have two degrees *show-off alert* - one of them being a Creative Writing Degree. For one of my assignments I was asked to do a piece of life writing, on a subject which changed the direction of my life - so here's a snippet!
(In case you want to read the whole saga - I have written a book *show-off alert* - follow this link An Aptitude of Zen)
Life, part two
Sometimes the changes which happen in life are so subtle that they blend into one another so smoothly, seamlessly. With the relentless hustle and bustle of bringing up a young family the last thing I wanted to acknowledge was the fact that I was losing my precious hearing; I was born into a hearing world and wanted to remain there. I loved to talk and to listen to other people; I didn’t want anything to alter that. So as defiant and stubborn as ever I made it my business to ignore the fact, refusing to acknowledge that a cataclysmic change was happening in my life whether I liked it or not. Fast forwards a couple of years and here I am with only 5% of my residual hearing left, which to those not familiar with ‘hearing impaired’ terminology means I am profoundly deaf. Even with the assistance of my digital hearing aids I am only able to achieve approximately 60% of what I might be able to hear – that’s 6 out of every 10 words spoken, try and imagine constantly trying to fill in the gaps.
Just for a moment let me rewind back to the beginning. At the early stages of my hearing loss it was very easy to continue life in a normal fashion, turning up the volume of the TV a fraction is not a massive upheaval in the wider scheme of life. Turning myself into a dizzy social butterfly, asking people to repeat themselves when snatches of conversation were a jumble was a harder task; hoping that my newly acquired acting skills distracted them from my hearing problems – after all, being deaf was something I thought happened to older people as a natural progression, not to young adults like me. Little did I realise at this time was that the grieving process had already begun and that I was at the very cusp of mourning the person that I no longer was or was ever going to become.
Children have a bizarrely accurate way of summing up a situation which adults often find challenging to articulate. I can vividly recall a conversation which I had with my then 5 year old daughter. It was on one of those days when things seem to be almost perfect, with all the clichés intact. The sky was cloudless and an amazing shade of blue, the surrounding countryside was beginning to flush out the weariness of winter with a spray paint of dazzling green. I was driving my little one home from school, chattering away about the day when I happened to mention that mummy was thinking of getting some hearing aids to help make her hear better. Almost immediately the atmosphere changed from being bright and sunny to ominously dark and foreboding. “I don’t want a mummy who wears black corks in her ears,” said my sweet little girl with a frown on her face. I can remember feeling as though I had been physically kicked in my stomach as we continued the journey home in silence, my head spinning with the thought that my child wanted a normal mummy, not one with an impairment.
No matter what changes are taking place in our lives the days, weeks and months continue to pass whether we like it or not. Unfortunately for me my hearing loss reached the point where I could no longer pretend that it wasn’t affecting my life and my tentative steps into the ‘deaf’ world began. Something needed to be done. Looking back now it seems quite clear that an element of acceptance about my new situation was entering my consciousness, though at the time I can recall feeling like a reluctant toddler who wanted to stamp their feet in utter frustration. Endless hearing tests became an enduring feature of my life together with the frequent trips to the local audiology department with its posters advertising sign language classes and deaf clubs, which make me laugh for all the wrong reasons as you never see ‘hearing clubs’ advertised! To this day I have an incredibly bittersweet relationship with the audiology department. Part of me is totally humbled with gratitude that such places exist and that I am provided with hearing aids which give me some semblance of a life. The other part of me hates and despises the place as my visits, even years later, frustrate and depress me due to the fact that I know the staff will never be able to provide me the ultimate cure, a pair of fully functioning ears.
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