Getting tired of existing in hearing spaces as a Deaf person with a cochlear implant. Even if I'm welcomed and accommodated I don't feel like I'm fully understood or there is any effort to understand me. They don't think about how I'm Deaf. I'm expected to match the same standards hearing people put for each other which are beyond unrealistic for me. I can't keep up with them and I'm exhausted.
People I've been friends with or worked with for years still don't get why I'm "rude" or "offputting", because despite knowing a Deaf person they didn't try to learn ASL for me. They see I can speak and think there are no issues. No one considers how exhausting it is for me to do something I don't do half the time and doesn't come naturally to me. Imagine trying to lift a two hundred pound weight from zero every single day. Then I hear them talk about how from childhood all people should have bimodal spoken and signed language education.
Believe me I agree. It's what I wanted ever since I had the capacity to think about it. But why is it that when I give them sources and encourage learning themselves, I get excuses? They say there's no time, or videos are too hard to learn from, or there's no classes, or there's nobody to practice with? Do they realize how seeing their excuses make me feel? I offer myself, and all the resources I know. They still don't take even 5 minutes every day just to practice fingerspelling or basic signs. They don't ask to practice with me.
It's like I'm only acceptable if I can listen and talk. The ways I'm more comfortable communicating aren't options to them, only a fantasy they rely on to show they apparently support me and other Deafies. Then they get upset when I end up leaving the conversation that I can't follow, or that I'm being blunt from hearing fatigue, or just when I feel like being myself. Instead of being angry at the system that put me in this situation in the first place.
Idk. All I want some real and consistent solidarity for once.
