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Little Impaired

Read this nice Helen Keller quote in a Gizmag article. "blindness separates people from things, deafness separates people from people," 

As someone who has impaired hearing in one ear from a young age, that only gets worse over time, I have learned many ways to cope with my deficiency while pretending all is well. For instance, I have managed to convince myself, it is not a big deal to have lost nearly seventy percent of my hearing out of one ear. I just need to mind the volume at which I speak on the phone or in person. If I spoke too loud it may clue in others to my problems. People who care about me are in charge of watching my volume and tell me if I being too loud. They also know my right ear is the good one so they stay to my right whenever possible. 

In my own simplistic ways, I have been able not to separate from people as a result of not hearing too well. So far, I have been able to do that without needing an aid. But Keller is exactly right that "deafness separates people from people". There are times, I miss the laugh line in a conversation with a group of people not all of whom know to stay to my right. So I  laugh along and pretend like I heard the joke. Then I must play catch-up for the next few minutes so I am back in the flow. It is a bit worse when someone said a something emotionally charged and I miss part or most of it, it becomes incredibly difficult to progress the conversation. I have managed to work around that too with reasonable success.

When with strangers, I have to carefully navigate the space so I hear them from my right ear. Over the years, it has become a part of how I live,and feels quite normal. I love that I can sleep on one side in a noisy environment because my bad ear is not conveying all that much. Its not all bad, yet I am acutely aware that I am lucky to have what hearing I do have left.
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