Sup Y'all, Hope we have a good time

[chase.91]

Sup y'all, name's Chase and I'm from Louisiana. I'm HoH since birth and was raised Hearing. There's a whole story to that and I'll get to it in a minute. First, I want to let y'all know that man is it cool to find this site, I've looked a couple times the past few months and everything was closed down or the chatrooms were no longer active. Reckon I'm at fault cause I never thought about Skyping until now.​

Back to my introduction, I was born HoH because of being an identical twin premy (is that what we call it nowadays?). I'm assuming my hearing is due to fact that my ears were underdeveloped but it it could be from other reasons not disclosed by my ma. Regardless, life moved on and I (this is mostly hearsay from my ma) was discovered to have been HoH at around 1 or 2 years old. I'm assuming at the time that because I was a premy and wasn't supposed to have lived persay the doc's opinon, they didn't pay any mind to some form of hearing test they do on newborns; went through a rough time in surgery to try to odds and kick the ever-livin crud outta what you call life, heh. Anyway, after being in ICU for a couple months before getting to go home, my ma noticed that I never was responsive as I should have been. Consequently, this lead to her being suspicious and she finally decided to have my hearing tested. To her dismay, she finally found out the reason of my supposed "badness and selective hearing" and probably felt remorse for undeservingly scolding me all those times. Course, this meant she had to adjust to a lifestyle she was never exposed to. However, being that she is my Ma, she found a way to provide me with HA's and put me through a normal, hearing school.​

Despite the fact that I went "beast-mode" (as some would call it) into the world, I had trouble with my speech as most can attest to (the usual CH sounds and all, I always picked on my ma and asked her why she gave me the hardest name in the world, "Chase" [yeah I know it's not the hardest, but at the age we can speak our own name, I'm sure I thought it was hard heh]). I had the usual Speech Therapist and one of those disability people from state help me with some things (I always referred to her as "My Disability Teacher," that reminds me, I need to get back in touch with her and thank her for everything she's done). Eventually, my grades weren't good and my ma was constantly being pressured into submitting me to the Louisiana School for the Deaf - LALSD. I'm not sure what my ma thought, but she kept me away from the Deaf Community and focused purely on me staying in a hearing school and being submitted to boring speech therapy (never could get those CHs right). Needless to say, I'm eternally grateful for her sticking by my side and trying to give me the most options out of life without being influenced by the Deaf Community. Consequently, I graduated with my High School Class like everyone else and I had taken upper level courses such as Calculus AP, History AP, and others. I was out to prove a point to everyone who said I couldn't do "this" or "that," nothing better than proving someone wrong about the supposed "disabilities" HoH and Deaf people were labeled with.​

Remember that last paragraph where I talked about my Hearing Pride? Here's something else, I have "Deaf Pride" as well. I know, I know, I'm sure there are some people who will comment on this and say "Well Chase! You just said your ma wouldn't let you be influenced by our community! You never learned ASL! You were never active/raised/ etc in the Deaf Community! You're not one of us!" well get this, I honestly believe that those who are Deaf and HoH are part of the Deaf Community regardless of how they were raised. Keep in mind this is just my opinion, but I think as long as there are "labels" for Deaf and HoH as well as those of us who were born or obtain hearing loss still exists, then there is a community just for them that should accept and help those who seek it. Back to my "Deaf Pride" shoot, I amazed my friends when I used ASL, had everyone learning at least a small part of the language. Of course, my ASL is slim to none, but it was better than nothing.​

During my High School Years, I was friendly with everyone and everyone was friendly with me. I was however, nervous to try out for Baseball (being that I played when I was younger) and had friends constantly try to push me for it. I decided not to in the end and decided to try out for soccer. Didn't make it if any of ya'll wanted to know. The funny thing is, most of the people came up to me and were supportive and said I should have made the cut, but that they think the coaches were blaming it on my Hearing (this ain't coming out of thin air and this was coming from 2 good players who had been playing soccer for years) were they just saying that to be nice? I don't know. I appreciated their opinion and just blew it off. However, this piqued my interest in the Deaf Community and I began to look more into the culture but I couldn't find anything until my senior year. I was in French 3 just talkin to my professor and classmates, when I was called to the Principles (what the heck did I do wrong?). My friend's looked at me wondering what I did, sending me off to the office with heavy thoughts. However, I arrived to the office to find some random woman standing there and she immediately began to sign to me while verbally talking. I was blown away as this was the first person I ever met in person that was fluent in ASL. She was a new teacher at our school and had taught at the School for the Deaf previously. She had heard things about me and my academics and presumably some of her art students that were the "aftershock" of my teaching others ASL. Regardless, she showed interest and started to introduce me to the Deaf Culture before it was cut short by our busy school work of Senior Year. I've lost touch with her then, but needless to say this was me "getting my foot in the door" for the Deaf Community.​

All in all, I'm just a 21 year old guy that won't take "no" for an answer, yet among all the "inner self representation of the Deaf," I still managed to feel guilty. I had been raised and picked on in elementary school and middle school, yet learned to dismiss them and turn out deaf jokes at my expense during High School (no, these weren't aimed at the Deaf Community, it was more of an icebreaker to get others to feel more comfortable around me). Regardless, I felt guilty having been raised Hearing with no ties to the Deaf Community. I felt guilty for having options and persevering over the cliche labels associated with the Deaf.​

Having revealed some of my struggling lifestyle, I want to say that it's true that there are others who have had it worse than me, thing is, we're all different and we handle things different. You'll be going around in circles forever with the whole "there's always worse" tagline. I decided I would take learning ASL more seriously and try to find the Deaf Community in Baton Rouge. (I have yet to find someone Deaf or HoH, I sometimes swore I must have been the only HoH person on Earth!) I tried a Deaf Coffee Social but no one showed up, unless I was oblivious to it. Back on here, I 'ppreciate ya'll for reading this entire 5 page something essay (at least it looked like one heh). Hit me up if ya'll want, I'm welcome to new friends. Any more questions and I'll be cool with answering. (No, I didn't lay down my entire life in a book heh). Man, bet y'all didn't think I'd be writing an essay huh, heh.​

Catch Y'all Later,
Chase