Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.”
- Stephen Vincent Benet

When I was about six months old my mother taught me to swim. It was in my grandmother’s pool in Florida. It was an outdoor pool which usually have a higher concentration of chlorine which was not exactly common knowledge. The chlorine ate a hole in my eardrum and I have been technically deaf since then. I can hear muffled noises, and if someone is directly next to me, speaking into that ear I can hear but when my hearing is tested in that ear I register as no hearing.

Being hard of hearing, one learns little tricks. Walk with my good ear to the conversation. Smile, laugh, use verbal cues. You learn how to fake it well. But then there are those people you don’t fake it with. The people you work with. The people you love. These are the people you can’t afford to fake it with.

I’ve worked with my co-worker nearly every day for the last seven months. Since day one, the day when I first met him, he has known I am hearing impaired. Not a day goes by when I don’t have to ask him to repeat himself nearly every time he says something to me.

I am so sick of asking him to repeat himself. My boss may not always remember, but she is always humble when I ask her to repeat herself. She always apologizes when and calls me because she remembers that that is easier for me to hear. It isn’t embarrassing. But when my requests to him to speak up are met with a snarky answer I feel ashamed. Ashamed for not being as easy to deal with as other people… like I need some special help…

It upsets me that with all the effort we put in to learning others habits and acclimating to them he cannot remember something so essential as to the fact that I can’t hear. Like I’m lower class… like it isn’t worth remembering.

Like I am not worth remembering.

• Posted by Fea
• 3 comments
• A Day in the Life
• Hearing impaired., Myself., Sad.