HEAR HEAR

From time to time I am going to be talking about hearing loss in this space. I considered doing a blog entirely devoted to the subject but decided to approach the issue from the side, so to speak. My thoughts and comments about hearing loss may be collected instead in a separate page on this blog. For now, it will be HEAR HEAR #1 and #2 and so on. That cumbersome notation may also change.

I will make a special effort to avoid self-pity. Sometimes it descends on me like a hangover. I do not enjoy it. It’s non-productive and even destructive. Yet it’s no fun walking around with obscenely expensive hearing aids in my ears that often do not perform up to their advertised standards and without which I am virtually deaf. It leaves me feeling profoundly vulnerable.

WHY TALK ABOUT IT AT ALL? It helps me. If I can put words on my experience it helps me to see ways I might be able to optimize my hearing ability. Also it helps to dissipate my frustration and sadness at being unable to participate fully in life as I have always done. I find myself using my hearing loss as an excuse to avoid encounters where it is assumed that I can hear well. I don’t, for instance, attend live performances anymore. I’d love to attend author readings at the library but there is music that comes across as so much unpleasant noise and writers, in my experience, are some of the most inept public speakers. I simply can not win, so I take the path that’s easiest for me and avoid such things. Being a natural loner, I seem to be able to make the most of this condition, but I don’t like it.

I suspect that many of you experience, from time to time, difficulty hearing in certain environments. It may be that you sense the onset of some hearing loss yourself. Your comments would be welcomed and would appear at the end of each post. How do you deal with such conditions? Have you ever had a hearing test? Do you often find yourself asking, “What did you say?” or something like that? Have you ever pretended to understand, and did not? It is the insidious nature of any disability that it’s always there. In the end, your life is moulded around it like a form fitting coat. It doesn’t necessarily define you, but it becomes a consideration in just about everything you do.

Jerry Henderson      Until next time…