Hello, and today's video is going to be a tough one. Probably.
I'm going to be talking about how being a deaf, hearing aid user affects me...
Internally. Talking about my deafness to people is always weird, I don't know why, it just feels weird, so
even writing this script is feeling weird.
Hang on. I'm talking directly from a script?
I don't think I'm meant to be saying these bits out loud.
I figured I'd make this video, er, to try and help deaf people, as well as possibly hearing people...
so they kind of get what we go through. I usually only joke around about my deafness because I feel like no
one really cares. Whenever someone asks me a question about it, I feel like they're just being polite
Because...there's just nothing to talk about.
I also don't really talk about it because when I do talk about it, it reminds me of myself and then I end up
silently hating myself.Well, my deafness makes me hate myself.So, here's my, cue the title sting
I said a script part out loud again didn't I?
First of all deafness is often widely recognised as a condition that affects only elderly people. Other causes
of deafness could be from side effects, health complications, impacts, it can even be present from
birth. There are 360 million people who are affected by deafness. And 32 million of those are children
I made a video explaining more about deafness and what it is, so if you want to watch that, you can click on
the card...things...somewhere on the screen, and you can go and watch that. The world is adapted
and created, and shaped by hearing people, but things have been done to try and make it more accessible
for deaf people. T-Switch functions, or telecoil are supposed to help people, in like shopping centres,
and banks, and shops, but for me it doesn't really seem to do anything. Auto generated subtitles are still
incredibly bad despite it being now 2018, and they get most of the words wrong. You can get various types of
special equipment at home, but once again these are catered to elderly people, and they require the device
to be on you at all times. Pretty much, it's not really ideal for active users. So let's get talking about the actual
struggle. Deafness heavily impacts my mindset on a lot of things. I can wake up in the morning in the best
mood ever, I can be ready to face the day, but then the second I struggle to hear someone, or something
goes wrong with the device, then that's it. Let's imagine. I'm out and about with friends or family
and there's noises all around me, it's a busy area, there's traffic, there's people talking, all these noises
are going into my microphone, and the second someone tries to start talking to me, that audio just gets
processed as noise, and while I can make out a few words, everything else that they've just said just comes
across as gibberish. Repeating themselves may not help, I may still not be able to understand what they're
saying despite the fact they've probably said it like three or four times now. And then, I end up getting frustrated
with myself because I'm having to make them repeat themselves, and I still can't hear them
This frustration can sometimes lead to me getting visibly annoyed, this annoyance often gets
misinterpreted as me being annoyed at the person who is talking to me. It's not.
I'm annoyed at myself, and I don't mean to be making you feel like I'm annoyed at you.
It's not even loud noises though, my hearing aids have a thing inside them as most peoples do these days
where basically the levels, the device tries to automate levels in the hearing aids to give you the best possible
experience. This can lead to incredibly quiet environments sounding okay at the time, and then
the second someone tries talking to me, then the hearing aid picks that up, and it analyses the
environment, and then it's just like, "Oh okay, you wanna listen to the ait conditioning? Okay, well tell you what
I'll bump up the air conditioning volume for you, er, forget what this person is saying, listen to that."
"Listen to the whirring" That's great.
When I'm driving and Georgina's next to me trying to talk to me, or someone's in the backseat talking to me
all I can hear is the drone of the engine over them. This leads to me becoming paranoid that I'm annoying
the person talking by asking them to repeat themselves. So I just shut up and struggle and instead I
read the body language of the person, the facial expressions, etc, etc. I basically end up reflecting their
emotions back at them. If you're talking to me and you've got a happy smiley face and you're really
bouncy then I'm going to be...pretty much the same. If you're talking to me and you're a bit annoyed, or
shoulders down, etc, I will probably do something like. But it's not just the noisy environment that a deaf
person struggles with, sometimes it can just be the fact that, they struggle to mentally process the words
Sometimes when people repeat themselves they sometimes respond with a slower, more drawn out
way of talking. And that doesn't really help, because it's literally just mentally struggling. Imagine how annoying
it is when my nearly two year old daughter is trying to say one of her first words for the first time and I'm
struggling to hear what she's saying. Imagine my seven year old daughter getting all excited to
tell me a joke, or a fact and I don't know what she's saying. And this kind of hurts, the seven year old
daughter situation because, for example, she's trying to tell me something she's really excited about
you can see that excitement in her eyes, but then when I have to ask her to repeat herself then, as I do that, you
can see the excitement dying and fading away, and then that just makes me hate myself.
Let me try and explain it this way. Imagine the first time you hear a new song, you don't know what they're
lyrics are, but you can hear the vocalist singing, and then suddenly once you read the lyrics, or research the lyrics
you know what the singers saying. Now, I can hear the person talking to me, and I can pick out a few words
that they're saying, but my brain struggles to process other words. As a result my brain fills in the blanks by
either leaving them blank, or filling them with a word that sounds similar when it actually isn't.
Someone once explained it to me as, Being deaf is having dyslexia of the ears.
And yes, lip reading can help but not all the time.
As for struggling with the actual device, any activity that can cause sweat, such as running, playing, or
warm environments, carrying my daughter down the road, because she's really heavy and start to build up
the sweat because you're working out, stuff like that end up with sweat lands on the microphone which then
causes a muffled sound that I end up hearing and I hate that, erm, basically that won't go away until the
protective filter has dried off. And then when body temperature warms up, and this is where
it's going to get a bit disgusting
wax in my ear will turn into a warm goo which then finds itself getting trapped inside the mould of the ear
piece.
part.
this causes either a muffled sounds or complete silence. this often leads to me most days
just giving up on the idea of going out because I don't want that to happen, so it's embarrassing
pretty much. If it does happen, then I find myself having to take the hearing aid out, pulling the ear mould
off and then blowing down the tube to get rid of the wax that's stuck in there, it's disgusting.
and I don't really think it's great for public. As a result because I'm too embarrassed to do that in public
unless I find a really secluded place, then I end up finding myself walking around pretending to itch my ear
like, doing that, and what that does is actually kind of causes suction within the ear and dislodges the wax
temporarily, Or I just leave myself just to struggle and hope that no one talks to me before I get home.
The same thing goes for when my hearing aid battery is about to die. Ten minutes pass and you get a second
beep warning you that your battery is now dying, and then during that moment you get about, probably about
five seconds, six seconds, seven seconds, something like that...and you just listen to the world around you
fade to silence. At this point I'm panicking because I don't want to change my battery in public because
I also find that embarrassing because I have to take my freaking hearing aid out, and the hearing aid feels like a
part of me that should be private, I don't know why, it just does. Which is kind of confusing for me because at the
of the day, I've been deaf all my life, why am I hiding the fact that I'm deaf? I should be used to it by now.
Why, why am I so concerned about what some person next to methinks about me changing my battery
that I need to do...as for going out and aboutwith friends and family and stuff, sometimes I will cancel plans just
because I feel like if I go, and I struggle with my deafness then I'm going to hate myself and then the
whole experience of being with people is just going to be ruined and I'm going to be the guy that sits there
with a grumpy face, and I don't wanna do that. It's annoying though because before I go I will panic and
I will think about the worst thing that could happen, I'll think about the fact that I hate myself and whatever,
but then when I'm actually there, I show confidence, and I basically bullshit my way through the situation.
Afterwards depending on how it's gone, if it's gone good I will feel happy and good about myself, it its gone bad
and I experience some form of struggling wit deafness, then I will hate myself and feel utterly defeated.
And that's the thing about deafness, is that every day it feels like it's trying to win. It feels like it's the
antagonist in your own story, and it's trying to punch back down. However you can overcome it by fighting
back. By showing it that you're not going to give up on trying things. That you won't let it make you feel bad
that you can't hear people, That YOU will exceed your own expectations, and while I still struggle to take
everyday positively, and while I can learn from my own advice, I still say. You can do it. I've had people ask me
if I could choose to not be deaf, would I take that option? And after years of thinking about it...
No, I don't think I would.
While being deaf has caused for me feeling really bad about myself for years, and years, and years
While I still struggle with it on a daily basis.
While it's held me back. It has encouraged me to push on. It has encouraged me to fight back.
It tries to stop me doing things I wouldn't normally do, I push back. It makes me cry, I'll smile later.
It'll make me struggle, but I'll use that struggle to try and help others.
Be that through explaining deafness, or be that through showing that it's okay to struggle, the point is, I
struggle with deafness, but the days that it kicks me down and I fight back and I do things
then, those are the days that I feel good about myself. And even if you're not deaf, whatever is getting you down
Fight back. Kick whatever it is in the ass and show that you're stronger, and even if you struggle
it doesn't matter. It may defeat you one day, you may hate yourself.
You may hate everything.
But go away, isolate yourself, go for a walk, put some music on, do some painting, read a book, do some
drawing, talk to a friend, talk to a family member, watch some films, watch some TV show
Let it defeat you. Let it ruin you. Remember the feeling. And then use that memory as a way to remember
that you hate that feeling, and use it to fight back. And with that, thank you very much for watching
Until the next video, Into Oblivion
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