I’ve probably been living in a semi-silent world for well over twenty years. I’m sure there was some progression of my hearing loss through those years, but ultimately, I haven’t been able to hear “properly” for a very long time.
What happens when you take a person who has been living in semi-silence and suddenly give her the capability to hear in a completely different way? As humans, we have five senses… one of those being hearing. Also as humans, we have the capability to adapt to circumstances over time. My quiet world was all I knew. I didn’t know what I was missing because I couldn’t hear what I was missing.
After 20 years of silence, you take this girl and put a device in her ear and say, “Here you go! You’re all better now! You can hear!”
Stuff some cotton in your ears for an hour. See what kind of sensations or feelings it gives you. Imagine that’s the way you’ve heard the world for most of your life. Now, take it out. Take note of every sound you can hear now, that you weren’t able to, when the cotton was in your ears. Notice the crispness of the sounds you hear. Take it all in for five minutes. Now stuff the cotton back in your ears again and think about all those sounds you are now missing. How does it make you feel?
I’ve noticed that I’m really uncomfortable around full sound. Like just hanging out in the main living area of our home with my family. I’m hyper sensitive to every sound. There are sounds that pierce me, that make me want to rip my ears off. It’s causing me to isolate from my family. I can’t just sit in the same room with my family, while they take part in whatever activities they are doing, and happily focus on my own thing. I can’t. I already have a difficult time staying focused and on task when I’m in my silent world… in my new hearing world, I seem to only be able to focus on being irritated.
Inside my head I hear,
“Why is everyone being so loud?”
“I can’t sit here and do anything I want because all I can hear is everything else and not my own thoughts.”
“This is driving me crazy.”
“I need a break, I’m exhausted from all this hearing.”
Up to my room I go to get some relief.
My family is feeling my absence.
They are mentioning how much time I spend in my room.
They miss me when I’m not around.
It was the fact that whenever my family talked to me I couldn’t hear much of anything they said, that caused me to finally, after all these years, go and have a hearing test. It was the fact that I was constantly witnessing sighs of frustration or comments about how bad my hearing was. I felt the frustration of my family hearing me say for the TENTH time, “I’m sorry sweetie, I can’t hear what you said. Can you please say it again and look straight at me?” One of my boys could go on and on for minutes and I didn’t have the heart to tell them I was only picking up every 3rd word and deducing from there what the story was that they were telling me. I had to hyper focus on their mouth, expression, everything about them as they talked to me if I wanted to have any idea what they were telling me. I couldn’t be doing something like washing dishes, or cooking dinner, or switching the laundry and listen to them at the same time. The multi-tasking of doing ANY activity and listening to someone talk to me at the same time was impossible. I couldn’t do it. It was frustrating. It was irritating.
Do you know how deeply annoying it is to stop whatever you are doing every time someone wants to talk to you? Being a mother of five sons who constantly need to talk to you? I’ve had moments of just head exploding irritation because I have to keep stopping in the middle of what I’m doing. Any activity that I do, or someone else around me does, that causes sound, has to abruptly stop the second I need to listen to my child to validate what he needs. That’s basically anything I do besides sleeping. And it’s not just about the sound competing with what is being said to me. It’s also about not being able to hear even when there is no competing sound. I have to not only focus my hearing, but also focus my eyes on their mouth and expression.
I feel guilt all the time. I feel bad because I can’t hear them. I feel bad if I don’t stop what I’m doing and pay full attention to what they are saying. I feel bad if I blow them off and tell them that I have to finish what I’m doing and I don’t have time to STOP and listen to what they are saying, unless it’s an emergency. I feel bad for leaving the room because I’m wearing my hearing aids and I can’t take the over stimulation of hearing all the sound that 3 young active boys make, on top of already hearing every time my hair moves by my ear. I feel bad if I stay in the room and take the hearing aids out because then I’m back to not being able to hear when my boys need to talk to me.
What am I supposed to do? Be in the main living area with my family without my hearing aids in and then put them in when someone wants to talk to me. Seriously? I can turn the volume up and down in my hearing aids… but again, it’s super irritating constantly messing with the level of sound going into my ears. I haven’t been able to find a “sweet spot” where I can just feel comfortable and hear at the same time, most of the time. So far, that just doesn’t exist for me.
The most exhilarating moment of my day is when I go up to my room for bed and I pull those devices out of my ears. There’s this feeling of peace that washes over me. A hug of silence.
Silence… I crave it. It’s what I’ve known for so long. It has been my constant companion.
* I feel compelled to share my experiences to try and teach the world tolerance and compassion. You can’t see my hearing loss. You can’t see what I’ve experienced. You would never know unless I told you. There are people around us every day that are experiencing things that are invisible to us. There are many instances where we would treat someone completely different if we knew what obstacles they were facing. Maybe showing the world what would otherwise be invisible, can somehow change how we engage with each other. It’s my hope that people can find compassion through my words… not specifically for me… but for each other.