So I used to write songs, play guitar, and sing...oh, and I made videos of myself doing it. Yay. It was a fun time in my life when I still wore hearing aids and could hear sound and music, and I miss writing songs and singing and hearing my own voice...but ya know, such is life and rainy days 🙂
It’s been going on a year now since I quit wearing hearing aids. The progression of my loss leaves me with less than 10% of my overall hearing in both ears — hence, hearing aids were no longer effective, which meant there was no point to continue wearing them.
It was about two years ago that my audiologist said I was legally deaf and was now a candidate for cochlear implant surgery. At that point, I wasn’t ready to have my head cut open and something placed on my skull so I’ve been taking time to embrace being deaf and adapting to living life without sound, which also means music and the voices of my loved ones and the birds singing in the morning and the hum of life.
I’ve also been using this time to master the fine art of lip reading. No better way to learn how to do something than when you’re learning how to do it to survive. If I want to communicate with people irl and make connections with people through conversation, lip reading is my survival tool.
But it’s a long process with a lot of frustration and resentment for hearing people lol because deaf and hoh people must up our game to survive in a hearing world. More is expected of us, for us to flourish in a world where sound is the vibe that most people thrive on. We have to supplement ourselves to feel adequate in a world that treats us inadequately.
That’s what a I like about the internet, my hearing, or lack of, doesn’t matter here.
I think that’s what many hearies don’t understand...the kind of isolation that is created when there is an absence of sound. I think when I was in the final throws of losing what hearing I had left, it was like a biological dream clock told me to write songs and sing and make the most of sound before it was gone...so that’s what I did and I’ll never regret going after that dream, fail or succeed — it was quite an experience.
I can’t hear this video clip anymore but I remember how my soul felt when I sang it...and that’s enough to carry me through all these rainy days.
