Once upon a time, I looked at my hearing family and wished to be like them. Once upon a time I wished the surgeries on my eardrum had done what they were supposed to. Once upon a time I told no one about my hearing loss. When someone asked, I said, “I am hearing impaired.”
Now I bear my flashy hearing aid as a badge of honor. I say I’m glad those surgeries failed because I got something better. Now, when someone asks, I say “I am Deaf.”
She first came to me in a dream, blond, well muscled, quick.She showed herself for just a moment before disappearing. She came again while I was awake, and I saw that she was young. Beautiful. She looked hardly more than a child. Her visits were short, but I gleaned what I could. I thought she was quiet and angry. I thought she was the type to watch someone without speaking to them and then turn around and slit their throat. I thought she was decisive. I thought she was direct.
When I finally decided to write her story as she begged so desperately, I realized how wrong I was, how much of herself she’d been hiding from me. She wasn’t quiet at all. She was outspoken, loud. She wasn’t only angry. She didn’t have a hold on her emotions. One second she was screaming at someone and the next bawling her eyes out. She could harden herself into a cold-hearted murderer, only for a child to draw out the gentle side hiding within. Her loyalty was as vast as the expanding universe. She would trek thousands of miles, fight hundreds of battles, endure many trials of pain and horror to find someone she loved. She was haunted by the terrors of her past, to the point of seeing screaming hallucinations.
When she first came to me, I had no idea how elaborate she was. I didn’t know she could murder without hesitation yet cling to a baby as if he was the key to everything. I don’t know where Eli Steele came from, but I’m damn glad she chose to show herself to me.
I didn’t fully realize how unobservant people can be until Tuesday night. I was running around with my godbrother and two of his children, both five years of age. The girl is deaf and wears hearing aids like me. I love being around her because she’s an amazing kid and we understand each other and connect in a way our hearing families don’t fully understand. Honestly, I feel like a bad ass when I walk hand in hand with this little girl.
Now, our hearing aids are not subtle. She chose zebra striped hearing aids and bright pink and green ear molds, while my hearing aids are custom painted blue with polka-dots and my ear mold is blue, purple, and white. I can spot her hearing aids from a mile away, and I can see mine whenever I walk past something reflective.
Well my godbrother decides to get the kids icecream. I pick my niece up so she can see the different flavors and sign, “Which one do you want?” She trails her finger over the glass to show me that she’s still thinking and finally pokes at the chocolate brownie flavor. I point too and she signs yes. All the while the guy working keeps asking her what kind she wants.
“Did I hide my hands while I was signing?” I think. “No, I didn’t. Surely he must have seen? Surely he sees her hearing aids and has noticed that neither I or her father have spoken verbally to her?” I frown at the man, and he asks my niece again what flavor she wants. She of course is still staring at the icecream. I point to the flavor she wants and the man puts his scoop in the one in front of it. “No the middle one in the back,” I say. He puts his scoop in the back left one. I sigh and say “No, the middle one.” He finally puts the scoop in the right one and looks up at my niece. “That one?” he asks. She stares at him. “Do you want this one?” he repeats. Just when I start to burn at the fact that this man is not using his eyes whatsoever, my godbrother tells the man, “She’s deaf.”
If I hadn’t been holding my niece I would’ve slapped my palm over my face. I was signing nonstop to the child, she was wearing very noticeable hearing aids, yet the man noticed none of it.
There is something wrong with this picture. Not just with people not noticing hearing aids, but with their ignorance as well. A boy pointed at my ear mold and said, “What’s that?” My school’s VICE PRINCIPAL asked what the ear mold was for, and I had to lift my hearing aid up partially off of my ear so that she would see it.
I’ve known for a couple of months now that people don’t really notice hearing aids. I had NO idea that once noticed, people wouldn’t understand what they were. The thought had never occurred to me. How could someone see a hearing aid and ask what it was? Yet it has happened to me now on many occasions.
It gets worse though. I was talking to a friend of mine in sign at my school, and a security guard came up with a ridiculously stupid look on his face and started mocking us. He wanted us to move to the front of the school to wait for our rides (which in itself was irritating because at the time I was involved in the school musical and couldn’t go home until 9pm) so instead of asking us to, he mimicked our sign. Not only was the fact that he was mocking us irritate me, but the fact that he didn’t even sign what he intended to. He was trying to say, “You both need to go to the front of the school,” but instead he said, “You dance over there.”
Just as mimicking a Chinese person talking in their language is not okay, mimicking a deaf person’s language is also not okay.
The more I learn how little everyone else has learned, the more I feel defeated. How can it be? But I know that I can’t let it go. I can’t sit by and watch the ignorance happening all around me. I have to reach out. I have to teach everyday of my life, sometimes I have to teach the same lesson to the same person multiple times. Will I be around to see the results? Maybe not, but I will still work to make change for all the deaf who come after me. Would meeting the president of the United States help? Sure, of course! I guess it’s a good thing I’ve just been presented with the shot of doing just that.
I’ve been trying for some time to get a hearing aid, and have finally resorted to raising money. So far this includes an account on a website for donations, but eventually I will most likely be involved in several at-home money making avenues, such as writing articles for websites or perhaps designing logos or just drawing things for people, and a part time job at least twice a week.
For now though, if you’re interested perhaps you might want to read the story of how I became the Half Deaf Girl, in my post Half Hearing, Half Deaf. If you want to help me in my pursuit to get a hearing aid, I would be delighted, and pleased, and very, very grateful. You can donate here: http://www.gofundme.com/1uyxag
Society expects people to be ashamed or embarrassed about the things that make them “not normal”. LGBT couples are frowned upon or given dirty looks when they hold hands or kiss in public. People with asthma are laughed at or dismissed as “that fat breathless kid”. Hard of hearing folk are expected to remove themselves from the world and met with surprise when they have not. Teen moms receive vicious glares from strangers.
The problem with this lack of tolerance is that LGBT couples love each other too. People with asthma are not all overweight. Hard of hearing folk are people too: we need groceries and gas, we like to go out to dinner and etc just like everyone else does. And teenagers have sex too.
So people shy away from the public eye. Society tells us to be content with ourselves and then society ridicules us.
But if I am dating another girl, I will hold her and kiss her in public. I will not hide my inhaler, and I will not get an in-the-canal hearing aid–I will not hide behind closed doors. And if I had a child I would not hide her either.
People try to shape and mold me. A human being is a person, not a sculpture. The world can accept me as I am. Bisexual. Asthmatic. Hard of hearing. I will not curb my sailor’s mouth, and as an artist and a writer I will not hide my pieces. If a written or drawn work is offensive to you then perhaps you’d better find yourself another writer or artist.
Our differences allow us to thrive. A species which produces identical organisms is a dead species. Do not ridicule others’ differences. Do not find shame in your own. Just thrive in them. If you can’t find yourself able to accept someone who seems from a different planet than you, that’s okay. There is a bridge between acceptance and rejection. It’s called tolerance.
I seem to find myself encountering situations where someone regards me as less intelligent simply because of my hearing loss quite often. Hearing loss. Stupidity. You see how they are in their own little sentences there? That’s because there is no correlation between level of hearing and level of stupidity.
There is no need for a hearing person to look at a hard of hearing or Deaf/deaf person like we are incompetent or unintelligent. When I hear “puddle” when you actually said “puzzle”, that does not mean that I am stupid. It means that I am hard of hearing, big shocker.
I get good grades, I write every single day, I’ve been published several times, I will go as high as Calculus in high school, I take the advanced English courses, I get high scores on my papers, I get advanced scores on all of the ridiculous SATs and CSTs, (perfect scores on the CAHSEE) I speak and write English fluently, I am learning ASL and German, (the latter is slower progress than the first) I can cook, I can clean, I can drive, I can take care of children both hearing and deaf, and I can THINK. What makes me any less intelligent or competent than a hearing person?
Please, all hearing folks. Please listen to me, for I am a bridge between the Deaf and the hearing, for I am half and half. Those who do not hear are not dumb. Please look at us, not down at us. Please speak to us as our age would suggest you should. A thirty year old man should not be spoken to like a two year old. And above all, please do not in response to a request for a repeat tell us to open our ears. We cannot. But you can open your EYES.
Folks have been interested in my writing since day one. “Oh darling, let me see your story!” My teachers adored my creative writing assignments, often reading them aloud to the class.
But always, always they ask why do I write? People seem to expect some holy answer, Well when I was eight years old I–NO! I don’t mean to crush all of these dreamy beliefs people have. I just mean to be honest. I write because I have to. It’s that simple.
There are words inside my head, always there are words. These stories evolve all by themselves. Poems bounce around. Books tangle my thoughts, thoughts of other worlds and other times. How could I possibly function as a normal human being if I did not get these stories, these books, these poems, to stop knotting my thoughts like a wild-child’s hair? I couldn’t. I have to get them out. And that is why I write.
This past Christmas, an organization gave me reassurance that there are still wonderful people in the world. I had my paperwork sent to this organization to see if I qualify to get a hearing aid. After they notified my mother that I did in fact qualify, they told us that there were several families interested in adopting students from my school for Christmas (Meaning they wished to purchase gifts.) and asked if we were interested. My mother told them we were.
When a few people from the program showed up two days before Christmas Eve, they brought gifts not only for me, but for my 7 month old nephew and five year old niece as well. But they didn’t stop there. They had bought us groceries. Our kitchen table was covered with bags of food.
Our saviors came just in time, and they were much needed. After filling the car up with gas, paying her phone bill, and buying all of my meds that I recently ran out of, there would be no way my mother could’ve paid for groceries last month.
I am so grateful to these amazing strangers. Thanks to them we are well fed, I got to see my niece’s face light up with joy at the sight of a loaded Christmas tree, and soon I will have a much needed hearing aid.
GOD BLESS YOU.
Half Deaf Girl is what my hearing friends call me. I don’t find it offensive, after all why would I? The nickname is fitting, for while one ear works perfectly the other does not. So in a way, I suppose, I am half hearing and half deaf.
When I was five years old every student went through a hearing and vision test. My vision was normal. My hearing was not. I had failed the hearing test, and my mother was told to take me to the doctor to try to figure out why. When she did, we discovered that I had a hole in my eardrum. The doctors told us it was either from the tubes I’d had when I was a toddler, or from a heavy blow to my head. Neither would surprise me, because plenty of children with tubes in their ears end up with holes in their eardrums, and my older sister did particularly enjoy slamming my head into things. My mother was told that the doctors would fix me. They would repair the hole, and that would be that. My hearing would be fixed. Or so they thought. Now, I was just a child. Five years old. I didn’t yet have the pride or indignation that would lead me to refuse such a surgery and say that I was perfect the way I was. And my mother didn’t see it that way either. (In fact she still doesn’t.) I, her baby girl, was broken, and she was determined to fix me.
When I was eight years old we drove to the military base where my surgery would take place. (As my father was in the Air Force, all of my medical is through them.) I was terrified of course. When I dressed in my hospital gown they wheeled me on a bed up to the operating room. I remember staring at an old woman in the elevator with pleading eyes. Save me. Save me please! my face screamed. She looked back at me strangely, apparently not knowing what to make of a pale child being wheeled about in a bed.
The doctor tried thirteen times to get my IV in “right”. Half of them were while I was awake, half of them were after they finally just put me to sleep. I know it was thirteen because that’s how many welts were scattered across the backs of my hands when I woke up. And God was waking up horrible. I felt like absolute, and utter crap. There were wires running about my arms, a monitor next to me, a bulky bandage wrapped around my head with a cup over my ear that was shaped like a miniature helmet, I had a busted lip, and my mouth was dry. (I discovered later the logistics of the surgery. They had taken skin from above my ear to patch the hole, and had had to shave some of my hair off. I was not pleased.) Worst of all, there was no one in sight. I was in a room all by myself. Without further hesitation I began to sob, and I tore at the bandage on my head because it felt funny and it looked funny and I did not like it. A male nurse came into the room with a disgusted look on his face and said, “What are you crying for? Do you want a popsicle?” The harshness of his voice had me sobbing harder, so I could only nod my head. Several minutes later I was suckling on a big red popsicle, only gasping every now and then. Finally, finally my mother entered with a doctor. The doctor told us that they would keep me overnight to monitor me and make sure the effects of the drugs were gone. I froze and glared at him with such vehemence that he immediately said, “Or you can go home today.” And I did.
When I had my followup hearing test we discovered that my hearing was well once again. The hole had healed. But when we went back in just months later, the hole was back, as well as my hearing loss. The doctors took no notice that it was worse than it had been before. They opted for a second surgery. And when the second one happened the same exact way with the hole and my hearing loss both returned, they opted for a third. This time they knew better than to use skin tissue to patch the hole, so they tried fat tissue instead. So now I have scars at my bellybutton as well as above my ear. Months later, my hearing loss was back again, and worse again.
My mother was defeated. I had missed too much school as it was, how could she try a fourth time when three had already failed? So she gave up, and simply decided to ignore my hearing loss. For several years I followed suit, until I realized that wasn’t an option. I would fail school and lose everyone I loved if I didn’t accommodate for my hearing loss. So I asked people to repeat themselves. I asked people to speak louder. I asked people to face me when they were talking. And even though at first I got yelled at, I turned my chair sideways so that my right ear (the fully functioning one) faced my teacher in class. At first I didn’t want to make her feel bad by telling her I had hearing loss in my left ear, but after getting chastised several times it built up too much. “I HAVE HEARING LOSS!” I shouted, because if there’s one thing that makes a hearing person pause, it’s shouting. I would’ve felt bad at the sight of her mortified face if I hadn’t been so fed up. And so I started taking advantage of the note on my record, “Hearing loss in left ear; needs seating on left side of classroom”.
I had to go back every six months for hearing tests. And it was horrible. Going into something every six months and knowing that you will fail. And as I was only around hearing people, I had no idea about Deaf Culture and ASL, or anything of the sort. All I knew was that there were all these children whispering to each other, and hearing things that I did not hear and that I was different and so that must mean broken. I did not know then that kids could get hearing aids, and by the time I was thirteen I was preoccupied with something else. Asthma. When I got an inhaler I had to carry it with me everywhere I went, by doctor’s orders. And I was embarrassed at first, but when I started basketball I was a “jock”. Nobody could make fun of me! It gave me the confidence I needed, and in a year I started researching hearing aids. Because if I could walk around with an inhaler stuffed in my knee length sock and not care about the stares, I could put a hearing aid on my ear and not give a damn either. And I didn’t want the ones that are hidden. No, I wanted mine in full view of the world. I wanted to force the world to accept me. Still do.
But by the time I was fourteen my mother was too used to pretending I had normal hearing. She was too used to being in denial. So whenever I tried to make progress on getting hearing aids she shot me down. I think she couldn’t bear to believe that I wasn’t the healthy little girl she had prayed for when she miscarried before becoming pregnant with me. In any case, I was determined to find something. Because I was tired of depending on other people. I wanted to be self sufficient. So I researched state programs, trying to find someone that could get me a hearing aid. We certainly didn’t have the money, with my mother now recently divorced and living with my sister and me under my older brother’s roof. But I could find not a single program. Not a single person. Instead I looked for contests with cash rewards. That research led me to getting published for the first time, and winning a scholarship. (Though the scholarship isn’t redeemable until I enroll at a college.) Eventually with little results, I instead tried to find cheap hearing aids. Because at that point I didn’t care as long as I had SOMETHING to start with. I found some that I could afford, did a bit of research to make sure it wasn’t a scam, and made the purchase. But there was a mix up between the company and my bank, so the order was never made, the money never taken, and the hearing aid never shipped. After that I gave up.
Until one day while I was at my godbrother’s house, a friend texted me and told me that her grandpa had just died. Her deaf grandpa. And her parents wanted the hearing aids to go to good use. My godbrother’s girlfriend asked why I was suddenly so excited, and so I told her the whole thing. My hearing loss and futile quest for hearing aids. She gave me an are-you-kidding-me-look, stared pointedly at her four year old deaf daughter sitting on the couch without her hearing aids on, and exclaimed, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner you need hearing aids?” Without sparing another look at me she spun out of the room, returned momentarily, and plopped a plastic case onto my lap. I gave her a suspicious look, hardly believing what I thought was inside. Then I opened the case, and there lay two beautiful BTE hearing aids. My eyes filled with tears.
My search wasn’t over yet though, because now I had to find someone who could adjust the left one to my hearing loss. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. After checking three different places, two of them closed, one of which I visited repeatedly but it was never open, and the third couldn’t adjust the specific brand I had. So I called several stores and left my name and number, hoping for a call back from someone who would tell me they could adjust my hearing aids for me. But I never received any calls.
As you can imagine, I was beyond fed up. I pretty much gave up a second time then. And I ended up having to give the hearing aids back to my godbrother’s girlfriend because her daughter needed them for a coming doctor’s appointment.
Finally I settled for buying a cheap, crappy sound amplifier last year. The thing is so big it nearly reaches my chin, it’s extremely uncomfortable, it falls off constantly, and it squeals horribly. Worst of all, it looks very similar to a bluetooth headset. Not good for someone in school. I got scolded by my choir teacher (yes, yes I know, ironic that one with hearing loss would be in choir. My position is at the very left edge of the choir, so it works out fine) when he saw me with it in. I told him it was a sound amplifier, and that just made him suspicious because what in the world was a sound amplifier. (After learning that it confused people when I told them it was a sound amplifier, I took the easier route of calling it a hearing aid. And for all intents and purposes, it IS a hearing aid.) When he finally believed me I realized that it wouldn’t be the first time I’d have a conflict. And it wasn’t. While I was walking to my third period class with my friend, the Vice Principal caught sight of my aid blinking on my ear. He started to march toward us and called, “Hey bluetooth! Take it out!!” My friend (such a very good friend) spun on her heal with a scathing glare and snapped, “It’s a hearing aid!” He left me alone.
So, I got a doctor’s note saying that I needed my weird little hearing aid. My doctor (a new one, because my two previous doctors had been deployed) told me that if anyone gave me trouble to tell him, claiming that they’d better leave me alone unless they wanted him descending upon the school with the full wrath of an airman. It would’ve been a funny sight too, considering the school seemed intimidated enough by the Air Force Seal atop all of my doctor’s notes. And I’m still grateful to my doctor for being so understanding and protective, because my mother was never the person to defend me when it came to my hearing loss. I nearly started crying during an appointment in fact when my mother started up again about putting me through a fourth surgery, and oh I didn’t need a hearing aid and I just had teenaged selective hearing. My doctor made her leave.
And I do have a few people in my life like this. My best friend, for one. (Well, one of them, because I have two.) When she found out I had hearing loss, we fit together like a square peg in a square hole. When she was little she had a deaf friend, who gave her her name-sign, (My godbrother’s daughter gave me mine.) holding the a-hand and twirling it rapidly from side to side. So my best friend already had experience. When we were in public she guarded my bad ear with a vengeance and repeated the words of soft talkers. When I began learning to sign, it only felt natural that she should too. So I taught her as I learned, and our bond grew deeper. Because ASL was for me. I love that she learned so passionately and never blinks an eye when I lapse into signing mid-sentence, or if I sign the whole time we are together. And I love that people at my school don’t really stare anymore. And I could never forget the English teacher I had as a sophomore. Because she seems to forget that I’m not an adult. We vent our frustrations, and she gets angry along with me at the things that make me angry. Especially things that involve my hearing loss. And only months after discovering my hearing loss, she submitted my paperwork to a program called healthy start. They work with schools to help poor kids medically. I qualify to get a hearing aid.
I’ve never been Deaf with a capital d, I’ve always been hearing. Though some of my beliefs and frustrations certainly do mirror those of Deafies, I have been in a hearing world my entire life. That doesn’t change the fact that I do want to be more involved in the Deaf Community. But if I have to go to a hearing school and live with hearing people and love hearing people, then I want my hearing aid. It will not change who I am. Because every night when I go to sleep it will come out of my ear and I will be hard of hearing again.
I will always be the Half Deaf Girl, or the Deaf Girl to my friends. But the term is used affectionately, and they don’t shy away from my hearing problems. They will joke about it and tease, but in the end they never hesitate to meet my hard of hearing needs, they are never mean, and they never expect me to be ashamed. That’s really all that counts.
Welcome to my world
Three kids for one mom to lip read
You know the one I'm talking about . . .
"Beautiful things are created by madness and written by reason."
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