Things are going to change.
Even if I have these now
I have only had those for 3 years. That kind of invisibility is NOT what I grew up with and it's not what I experience even with those hearing aids.
I may be the only person who thinks my hearing aids are the most visible things about me (though I doubt that) but that's what my experience is. Because I had these in high school:
and before those hearing aids I had these (in elementary-high school):
The white color is because I had these little plastic covers that you could put on the hearing aids to make them different colors, they were that exact size though. That photo is from when I was 6.
I don't have any pictures of the hearing aids I had as a 2.5-4 year old which had wires from the aids to a little box that I carried in a little fanny pack.
You get very used to people noticing something besides you when they look at you. You get very used to be stared at by kids on the subway. You get very used to that double take that peoples' eyes do from face to ears when you first meet them. I can still hear the voices of kid after kid who I would be playing with on the playground when I was 4 or 5 shouting, as kid's do, "why do you have those things in your ears?!"
I have a feeling that I will always instinctively wonder if people have noticed my hearing aids, even when (hopefully soon) I don't wear any at all. I just don't think that will be the kind of thing that goes away because it's all that I know. I mean, I may know that my hearing aids don't really get stared at anymore but I am just... used to feeling it and so I still feel it so why should I think I ever won't?
So what's the point then? If I think that nagging, pit of stomach feeling won't change? The point is that right now, I say I know because people tell me they don't notice my hearing aids. Not that I don't trust you guys, I do, but it's hard for me to believe that. What will change is that subtle difference between knowing and knowing. The second is solid, strong, and simply true. No "formatting" required.
At the same time, in a weird way, I'm losing something. I am losing what is normal to me. I told my friend the other day something I've never told anybody else. (I study fiction writing at school) all of the characters in all of my stories have hearing aids, in my head at least. In my imagination of their lives beyond the story they're in they don't spontaneously jump into bodies of water and nobody pushes them into a pool. Most of them don't have a hearing loss, they just wear hearing aids because that's just what you do. You wake up and you put your hearing aids in, you lie down to go to sleep and you take them out. None of this gets written into the story, I just take it as a given.
The two most basic things that I do every day, the two most routine, necessary, life changing actions I perform by rote every single day are going away. I mean, imagine suddenly not brushing your teeth every day - for a mild analogy. I imagine it will feel odd, even as I'm only getting one ear done now I think only putting in one hearing aid is going to be strange.
My parents always tell the story about how the first time they put my hearing aids in I looked at the audiologist and said "thank you" and how excited I was when I got home to find out that Grover on Sesame Street actually talked! My hearing aids are an object that I take out at night and before going in water that definitively delineate between what could have been and what is. I'm grateful to them for that. I'm also ready to say goodbye to them I think, and move forward. It will just be... different.
As it's past midnight on Thursday morning, the surgery is tomorrow... wow.
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