The invisible man

in #life5 years ago

In discussing hearing issues with people with no hearing issues you usually find yourself having to explain how do they get it wrong generally. It's not their fault, it is hard to understand hearing issues because there are no equivalents out there and there isn't much to relate. Also, people don't really understand how much they rely on their hearing.

For example wearing a hearing aid is not like wearing glasses.
This is a common misconception but with glasses you'll see as close to normal as you can remember. You never wear glasses and see just half the text you're reading or a blurry person.If that's the case, go get new glasses. Glasses are a perfect solution to a problem. Hearing aids are an imperfect solution to a problem but still the best we have, safe for an implant.

With an aid, you have an electronic device that will "hear" for you and feed to your brain a modified version of the sound in the frequencies you need based on your audiogram. I can't imagine how things can go wrong here. Add to this that it needs to separate voices from noise pollution, that people talk in all kind of weird directions, that there is wind, traffic and other various weird sounds. You'll maybe reach the conclusion that it is amazing they even work a little :)

Anyway, the main thing is that I am not wearing a hearing aid so I'll hear best, is so how I can hear at all. This and watching people talk and context can often be enough to sustain a conversation. It won't be a very satisfying conversation necessarily. It's immensily frustrating to hear parts. I often leave conversations even wondering if I actually had a real discussion, if I can remember what we talked about with any kind of precision ( bit and scrapes are hard to put togheter in a cohesive way in your mind) and what the other person thought about all this. Did I fool them?

If I did: GREAT! Right?
no. wrong
I don't want to fool people. If I fooled a person it's either I was such a good actor or they didn't care enough to pay attention. What's more depressing?

If I did not. Well, it's even weirder I guess cause then they might think that I was trying to fool them and why?

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Anyway, I spend a lot of time explaining this to people and frankly while they do get it, they also don't. It's hard to tell when someone heard or not and easy to forget they don't.

However, I had a talk with a friend of mine who was amazing in his insight. I have to say I was so impressed with his deep understanding that I wondered if he maybe has any experience with this.

He said: It's like you're there but also are not.

Exactly. The invisible man. There, but with no effect. Present, but to none. Ignored, unheard, static, unimportant, alone.

That's how hearing-loss feels. A constant diminish of who you are by your lack of your ability to express it naturally. A soul-crushing resignation that this is the future. A dying of whoness both external and internal.

You are. But also not. The in-between.

I'm quite amazed that this guy got it and expressed maybe better than I ever could. And I am thankful for this talk, I guess I felt understood. Maybe that's all I want. I know he is a friend of mine forever now.

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