My Soapbox

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_med_hearing_loss_teens

Please read first, so you'll understand what I'm referencing. Trust me, it's worthwhile. Be sure to have a bag or bowl handy.

I am 21, as you can read in my profile. I've been severely hearing impaired since birth; I am deaf in my right ear and mostly in left ear. I have to wear a hearing aid in my left ear in order to hear most anything. When I was five, the school nurse did a routine hearing test and said I was profoundly deaf. I was taken to a specialist and the bastard said I was faking it for attention, as my parents were going through a lot of issues. So for another five years, my parents constantly punished me for ignoring them. Kids my own age thought I was weird and/or stuck up for not paying attention to them and responding. When I was ten, my dear mother finally noticed something was wrong when I always turned my head to look at someone if they talked to me from my right side. To another specialist, I was whisked, to calm her guilty conscience.

Well, my poor doctor. He just about a stroke and spent about thirty minutes berating my parents, demanding to know how they could have a child that's only a few steps from being stone-deaf and never notice anything. My question exactly. When 'deaf' hearing is normal, I obviously couldn't go to my parents and say, oh, I can't hear you. When I did, I was yelled at for back talk. I compensated with lip reading and just guessing at what people were saying - nods and murmurs work very well if you have no idea what the fuck the other person just told you, it's a great party trick.

I got a hearing aid at eighteen when I started college. I was miserable my high school years. People who knew about my 'problem' thought I was a freak and not worth the effort. People who didn't thought - again - that I was stuck-up when in reality, I had no idea someone was sitting in my blind spot, on my deaf side, speaking to me. I had no boyfriends and only two friends who stuck by me. I was homeschooled because the only option in public high school was to have the teacher wear a microphone and I wear a receiver. I'm not stupid. I did not want to be labeled as needing 'special treatment' the first day of high school; so, I fought with my parents until they agreed that as long as my grades remained high, they would keep me home. And so I survived another four years.

College was - is - hell. Professors aren't too bad, as long as they speak loud, because I can see them and read lips for the most part. As for other students, no one likes getting 'what?' back every other time they say something. I can't say I blame them, I get tired of saying it all the time. So, people don't like to repeat themselves every other sentence and I'm tired of making them try. I'm starting a university in two weeks and I'm scared to death. I can't lip-read eight people at once; I can't make everyone turn to face me in a class discussion; I can't, I can't, I can't.

Bitter? You bet. Pissed off? Yep. REALLY FUCKING PISSED after reading that article?
Hell yeah.

The line that really torqued me out was in the sixth paragraph from the top: "A teenager with slight hearing loss might not be able to hear water dripping or his mother whispering "good night."
Well, poor fucking baby. I was called a bad kid, disrespectful, disobedient, bratty, etcetera by my parents and family for years. I still am, since now I apparently use my handicap as an excuse to ignore my parents, because I just love to do that so much.
I wonder how many times my mother whispered 'good night' to me and I didn't hear? Anyone want to bet?

These kids are stupid. Of course you're going to screw your hearing up by blasting your MP3 players in your ears constantly - I can't even listen to music without windows down, no headphones for me. And I'm expected to feel sorry for these kids?

I'm deaf because of a medication my mother took when she was pregnant with me.
They're deaf because they're too arrogant to think that yes, perhaps this can happen to them.

I'm deaf because of a choice my mother made.
They're deaf because of a choice they made.

And I'm way more deaf than these little fucks. I don't even tell most people - it's too much of a hassle, I'd rather fake my way through a conversation than have people yell at me in their ignorant attempts to 'help'. I don't go around looking for sympathy because I never got any and I don't get any now. Every once in a blue moon my parents will feel guilty about it, briefly, for all the punishments and lectures and all the times I was told I was a bad daughter.

You wanna know what happens after they have that brief moment of guilt for something that they didn't cause out of malice and ignored for ten years because they didn't want to admit they had fucked up?

They ask me, "Do you hear that?"

No. I fucking don't hear it. Stop asking me.