The Hardest Part of My Hearing Loss Is My Favorite Thing About It
The benefits of learning to embrace the silence.
As I try to imagine all the difficulties I’ve faced, I keep coming back to the benefits my hearing loss has given me. I’m a confident, fearlessly adaptable person, a crazy good listener, and I’m in love with observing the cute subtleties of being human. I believe it’s because of my hearing loss that I’ve grown so connected to the world around me.
I was 6 years old when I was diagnosed with chlosteotomas. 15 years and 7 operations later and my left ear’s hearing increased a ton, but my right ear still fell pretty far behind. And somehow along the way, happy little Sammy only became even happier and brighter. It’s hard to believe that I never paid too much attention to all the “negatives” associated with hearing loss.
A Blessing in Disguise.
I’ve always known myself to be a super positive and optimistic person. Being raised in such a supportive, sarcastic family has given me “my rose colored glasses.” That’s not to say I don’t have my occasional upsetting thoughts about not being able to hear, but I don’t let those thoughts keep me from being my best self.
I can’t tell you how I learned to do that. It was something I recognized in myself from the very first doctors appointment. I was going to be brave and resilient. There was no other choice but to see my life and my hearing loss as a blessing in disguise.
Honestly, sometimes I do wish it was easier. I wish I didn’t have to struggle so hard to hear a conversation. I wish I didn’t have to say “what?” as often as I do. And I wish I didn’t have to put my life-line in a pair of hearing aids that I’ve already lost once before, stepped on and broke, and jumped in the water with them by accident.
But at the end of the day, I can hear! And on the days or moments I can’t hear very well, I have always made the choice to refocus my thinking into other aspects of the world around me and my own little world inside of me.
The Hardest Part
The most difficult thing about being hard of hearing is to keep up with the pace of those who can hear, in order to not miss out.
I sleep on my right side, so I can hear my alarm with my left ear. I race to pick a seat at the dinner table so my left ear faces the majority of the people. When someone is trying to talk to me from a different room, I run over to them and yell, “Wait, I can’t hear you!” I put hearing aid batteries in all of my backpacks, my apartment, and my car to prevent them from ever dying on me.
It sounds more or less, “easy” to do. But the thing about hearing loss is, you’re never quite sure when it’s going to be easier or harder to hear.
The feeling I hate the most is to be in a conversation and to say “What?” more than twice, only to have the other person give up on repeating themselves for you. They say, “It’s fine, nevermind.” And you’re left there feeling rejected. And STILL out of the loop. You totally missed out.
Or imagine you’re out boating with your friends, and you come across a rock everyone is hiking up to and jumping off of. Where the heck am I supposed to leave my hearing aids before I jump in, and how long will I have to go without being able to hear anyone? Or should I just sit it out, and watch everyone else jump in?
I can’t even tell you the amount of times I’ve gone to a pool party and strategically placed my hearing aids in the pockets of my shorts, wrapped in a t-shirt, hidden under my towel, in a corner no one will go to. Or the times I’ve dared to get in the water and swear I won’t get my head wet, just so I could allow myself the worry-filled joy of hearing.
“What I can’t hear, can’t hurt me.”
I realized I had this way about me that didn’t mind too much about what I didn’t know I was missing out on. Outside of social situations- the things I can’t hear, can’t phase me. Until of course I was peacefully falling asleep in my tent out in the forest of Shasta, California when my partner whispers to me, “I can hear a bear breathing right outside of our tent, I can hear them walking. I am FREAKING. OUT.”
Welp, I can’t hear the bear! So in my head I’m thinking- there is no bear, I can keep sleeping. Funny enough, a couple hours before getting ready for bed, I was the one crying in fear of bears and being laughed at for changing my clothes after cooking, and hiding all the food in storage bins. And now I’m drifting off to sleep with no problem at all, leaving my partner to attempt falling asleep in terror.
My hearing loss saved me from my own fear that night. But it’s not always the case in which the quiet saves me from distress rather than creating it.
My favorite part is just beyond the fear of missing out.
So who do I become in these moments of conflict? I think I become a little daring, a little more present, and so much more aware of the energy I’m putting into communicating and interacting with the life around me. I am actively hearing, rather than passively absorbing sound. And that to me- is magic.
How often do we focus all of our attention into only one of our five senses? Not only that, how often do we actually listen to what we’re hearing?
Pick apart the song into instruments, erase the noise of the party and listen to that one person’s voice you’re talking to. Step out into the wild and let your ears waver between the wind and silence. Once I got beyond the fear of missing out I began to embrace the peace in silence, and the meditative act of intentional and focused listening.
Even when the silence is so loud, I am given the chance to focus all of my attention on what I see. Hand gestures, the raise of an eyebrow, the softness in a look. I could be surrounded by the sound of animals in the forest, and people partying at their campsite, but all I can hear is the crackling of the fire and let me tell you- it’s perfect; it’s magic!
If you are not hard of hearing- I dare you to go a day with earplugs in your ears, or noise cancelling headphones (with no music) and live life as you normally would.
Feel how much effort it takes you to fight through the silence, dying to hear a glimpse of sound. You’ll be searching for sound all day until you can find your own kind of comfort in the quiet. See where your mind takes you when your thoughts can’t fall into the monotonous distraction of background noise or conversations down the hall.
And when you take the earplugs back out, tell me which sounds now feel like magic to you too.
