Real Life Mute Button

I'm severely hard of hearing and one of the things I've come accustomed to is the sound of silence when I take out my hearing aids. I'm fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. On one hand I'm able to basically mute the entire world around me whenever I so damn well please, but the downside is I also don't hear birds chirping, nor crickets nor frogs croaking. Most of the sounds of nature are lost on me without the hearing aids.

Background Noise

With and without my hearing aids, the more background noise there is the harder it will be for me to understand people's spoken speech. It's a living nightmare in restaurants where they play this ghastly music too loud and then there's the people chatting away in the background on top of it all. It's too much noise. I know a normal hearing person can filter it out but my brain is not accustomed to filtering out these noises to select the voice I intend to focus on. I simply can't do it.

Fix My Hearing?

I get asked quite a bit if I would consider getting cochlear implants or future cures for my hearing loss or hypothetical magic pills. The answer honestly is no, I wouldn't want to restore my hearing to 100%. I'm aware of all the background noise, like the air conditioner, the fridge, footsteps, hell I learned not too long ago that scissors make a noise and that blew my freaking mind. I quite enjoy being able to mute the world without having the resort to ear plugs. The silence is comforting and allows me some me time away from the universe of noise.

Things I'm tired of

I understand people can be ignorant or stupid, but quite frankly it's a little condescending with some of the things that are thrown our way, the hard of hearing and deaf communities combined.

Can't hear music?

I can, I can also feel the music. With my hearing aids or severe amplification I can hear and enjoy music.

Oh never mind.

This is hurtful because I literally and genuinely want to hear what you have to say but I'm not catching enough words to be able to piece together what you want to tell me. Please repeat it with better enunciation so I can tell what you're saying to me please.

You're deaf and dumb?

This is an old thing from very long ago when kinds ruled over peasants. The deaf were forbidden from using hand signs to communicate and were forced to speak verbally. As a result, people thought that all deaf people are stupid because they couldn't speak properly. Hell I'm only severely hard of hearing and I still required years of speech therapy in order to speak correctly. Am I dumb though? No, and neither are most deaf people. We are capable of having conversations and doing amazing things. There are deaf people that work for NASA afterall and that's cool as hell.

Can you lipread me?

Yes, I'm often doing that regardless. Don't mind my death stare at your mouth, I don't want to kiss you I just want to understand what it is you have to say.

You speak very well for a person with a hearing disability.

Yeah, because I went through 7 years of speech therapy in order to properly be able to communicate. I was mainstreamed instead of being put into a school for the deaf and blind.

Do you know so and so? They're deaf.

No I don't know every deaf nor hard of hearing person in the world, I don't know who you're referencing. I don't associate myself with Deaf Culture because I wasn't brought up into it as a youngling like I should have. So to my perspective it's a club I'm not allowed in without disgruntled deafer than thou type people. Believe me, I've tried to go to some deaf events that were for socializing and whatnot and they didn't appreciate that I don't use ASL properly.

Where can I learn to sign?

You can learn it from several resources. Depending on your location, your sign language may be different than ASL as there are over 300 sign languages in the world in use today. A lot of countries rely on ASL but it's best to double check. Just because you speak English doesn't mean it's ASL in that region. The UK, for example, uses BSL and Australia uses Auslan.

If you want to learn ASL, I recommend LifePrint. There's also "Teach Yourself ASL In 31 Days" on YouTube. Be sure to turn on closed captioning.