I’m chuckling a bit right now ’cause I’m thinking of the emotional endurance it takes to deal with what we have. Imagine a person with normal hearing for just one day having our impairment. By the end of the day, I think they would be sobbing uncontrollably out of despair and helplessness in such a way they never would have believed was possible (maybe they would go loony). It’s as though, if it were possible to weigh the full ‘emotional content’ that goes with being hearing-impaired to the full ‘emotional-content’ of a person otherwise, I believe the scale would dip down so fast under its weight that the scale would topple over and crash on the floor.

Fortunately for us, there is strength in our weakness, and I’ve found a few ways to make being hearing-impaired beneficial (easily ignoring people is one of them).

Like you, I never reached out to others with similar hearing-conditions; in fact, I never did really reach out to my seriously deaf cousin, who relies mostly on signing (I lack the knowledge of signing). I didn’t reach out to others because I didn’t want my impairment to be a sole defining attribute of my social and personal life. In by itself, I treated it as a separate thing, but the reality of it is that it really does determine a lot of factors in my life. Succumbing a bit more to this fact, I’m looking to relate. I am also looking for some advice from others on how they deal with the primal-rage that comes with being at some level deaf, as I kid you not when I say the frustration I sometimes feel gives me the fury that makes me want to put the refrigerator through the wall. Even though I’m twenty-eight and I have been living with it for 25 years, I still get taken under by the fact I can’t hear much. I hope I’m not the only one, as I get concerned about others getting concerned about me when the see some sign of this frustration.

Well, thanks for allowing me to write a response. Had you not invited, I probably would not have said anything.

~Daniel