Hi, nice to meet all of you. Long post incoming, many apologies.

BraveNewDeafGirl

New Member
Joined
Mar 13, 2018
Messages
4
Reaction score
1
Hi, nice to meet you. If it's easier, you can call me BNDG. (As it is an acronym.)
I hope this isn't too negative of an introduction, but the negativity of my disabled life is why I'm here, if I'm being honest. (And it's much longer than I thought I would be, I very much apologise. But at least here people might be able to understand? There is a TL: DR if you prefer that.)
I hope my future interactions here will be more positive as time goes on, and I hope to make some friends.

I am what I define as Partially Hearing. Only half an ear's worth of hearing for my whole life up until this point.
I am struggling with being OK with this, therapy I have managed to get for this issue has been useless and I have only recently thought to search and see if there was a community I could join online (and easy to understand because seeing and reading is easier than hearing...!) and so here I am.
I don't expect any help as I don't know what help to ask for.

For my whole life I have been PH. I did used to sign before I started school, nursery rhymes and the alphabet etc, but then mother, also HoH/Profoundly deaf but having both ears, decided to put me into the hearing world after managing to convince the doctors I was indeed deaf. I have since forgotten it outside of the alphabet.
I have often wondered why she bothered.
My 15 years of school was basically just hell for me. Teachers, in all of them, told me off for 'not listening' when they would constantly turn their backs no matter how much they were told not to by my parents (dad is hearing) and the lady who would check on me every month or so, bullies were insistent on causing my ear as much pain as possible (whistling when you have the old analogue mic was just so fricken painful and they delighted in that~) and being disruptive in class meaning I heard more of what was directly behind me instead of a few feet in front. Middle school was the worst for this and I'm still not over that.
-----I had at that point heard of a deaf school in the 'local area' (I live in the sticks and attended my First and Middle school in a small town 10 mins away so 'local' is within an hour), and attempted to transfer. Mother told me they said I was too hearing for them. So excuse my distrust of the other side of the line I find myself on. She could of course have been lying but...!

I have been through so many tech advances, I find hearing-aids to be unreliable given these digital ones never seem to last and keep needing to be replaced - All the while I keep going back to my old analogue which is two decades old by now and still works fine albeit painfully and fiddly. While I appreciate it, I wish it wasn't needed, would actually help develop my hearing or would just stay a consistant thing.
-----(The thing to complain about my current new one (and there's a story with this as well), given in the last year, is how the battery only lasts a few days now instead of a full week. This will not be fun on holiday. Is there not a rechargable one yet?)
-----Every time I get a new 'aid it scares me and I hate change enough as-is, and I spend a week crying about it because I just want... I don't know what I want but I don't want this.
-----(Oh wait, that's a lie, I want to experience stereo/binaural/directional hearing. If anything just to enjoy music/games/films the same way as everybody else.)

I feel like I am a burden to any friends I managed to make and keep recently, any time I do go out (I still live in the sticks and am carer to aforementioned mother) I feel I just follow their lead since they can tell what sounds are what and where they're coming from and have control over the situation, and they have to put up with being my ears.

I feel like I should have grown into it by now. I spent the first 4 years of my schooling years in an All Saints, and I prayed as I understood with everybody else. Obviously I didn't do it right or I would be hearing by now, yeah? Will I ever grow into it? I know I was a Preemie but....!

A more mental thing that has been bugging me these past few years, given how much YouTube I watch, is how do I know what I'm hearing is mostly what everybody else hears? Am I just hearing an augmented reality because I have to live through a mic or speakers?
Yes, I have this with my friends as well, even when I am out and about with them and can see their faces in person.

More things need subtitles. The internet needs more in general. The one cinema I go to only does one showing of a subbed film I want to see, usually on like a Thursday night at 9pm, when I'm already there on the Tuesday to see the 2pm film. Being unable to drive yet, the buses never run that late...!
I thought DVDs were created so that they would always have subs, but I have several that do not come with them and that is illogical to me.
-----(Hence why the audioplays I make, yes ironic I know, I ensure have subtitles because I want people like me/us to enjoy them too. When I get around to changing my YouTube channel name this should be more obvious.)

Sorry about all of that but that so far is the culmination of my thoughts over the past two decades of living in the hearing world with all it's hearing-only tech and accomodation.

Let's get on with some positivity, somehow, shall we?

I am also a gamer, and as previously mentioned I write and make audioplays to post up to put subs on them.


TL: DR - Nice to meet you, you may call me BNDG as an acronym. I am not happy with being Partially Hearing but I don't know how to deal with it, apologies for the grievances I have listed. I hope my future interactions will be more positive and to make friends here. Any gamers here?
 
Welcome! Been there and done that. Wish I could give you a hug. Some people seem not to understand how AWFUL mainstream school can be
 
Welcome! Been there and done that. Wish I could give you a hug. Some people seem not to understand how AWFUL mainstream school can be

A virtual hug will be appreciated. I guess it's that little bit worse when you're the only deaf kid in all of these places so you have no-one to even try to connect with.
Sorry to start off so negatively though.
 
Sending a hug to you, I was there, it was awful for me in high school too. But my dear things will be alright, you're brave, you can overcome all that!
 
Sending a hug to you, I was there, it was awful for me in high school too. But my dear things will be alright, you're brave, you can overcome all that!

I've been trying, and I think that's why I'm here. As pitiful as it sounds, I think I need the help of 'my own kind' even though I don't know how many other PH people are here. If only it had been the last school that I had the option to walk out of, instead of my whole schooling experience.
 
I was born deaf and had to endure being the ONLY deaf kid in the school...Bullying was not nice....They'd yell in my ears to scare me....i even got assaulted several times during my school years. I hated mainstreaming....I wanted to go to deaf school.
 
I am new also and need to write my intro but first, I want to respond to your post. I was born with normal hearing so by the time I lost my functional I was 7 and had developed spoken English. My English development was 4 years above the average child. The hearing loss was overnight but it took months to realize I wasn't hearing speech but was lipreading. I could still hear environmental noises, including voices but not distinguish speech.
I was thrown into a class with all pre-lingual children so you can imagine my frustration and boredom.

To shorten this, I want to say that despite all the hurt, anger, confusion, bitterness and sadness it wasn't until I accepted my deafness. It took me a hell of a long time to realize those negative emotions were preventing me from being the person I wanted to be. I finally realized that while I no longer heard normal speech I still could conquer the world so to speak. To quote my dear mother, "You aren't handicapped unless you want to be."

Good luck on your journey through life.
 
Back
Top