They've told me that the Esteem will increase the amount of hearing I get and that the quality of this hearing will be a lot better. I'm not really sure what this means because I just can't imagine what better hearing "quality" means, it's not something I can quantify in my imagination if that makes sense. So what I'm really focusing on looking forward to is the invisibility and waterproof-ness of the Esteem. I was thinking about this though and that seems a little... incomplete. Shouldn't I be looking forward to better hearing just as much if not more? I think I just can't wrap my head around better quality hearing could mean.
The reason I decided to keep track of everything and write stuff down is because my mom suggested I write everything down about this whole “journey” so I figured, why not. I put the word journey in quotes because I don’t feel like on the surface I’m missing out on so much or that my life is going to change as dramatically as some of the other stories I’ve heard. I mean, I guess I would consider myself pretty successful in terms of my hearing. I have always gone to a normal school, I’ve had the bare minimum of accommodations such as preferential seating or captioned videos. I take language classes (something a lot of deaf/HOH people never do) and all that kind of stuff. But I realize that I do miss out on some stuff, most obviously I miss things that people say, lines in movies and on TV, but I don’t feel like it lowers the quality of my life or anything. I’m incredibly lucky to have friends who look out for me, who don’t mind repeating things for me (or who don’t show it if they do) who know at my glance to tell me what a character in a movie had just said or to summarize an announcement in class for me.
Maybe these are things that would seem sad to other people but it’s just normal for me. But what would it be like not to need these things? Or even just to need it less? Obviously it would be good, but how would it really feel? The answer? I have no fricking clue, I legitimately cannot imagine this situation. I think very visually and when I think about making plans with my friends I see the whole thing play out in my mind like a movie. In these "movies" I always instinctively include myself leaning over and asking “what?” or those 5 minutes at dinner where I lose the topic of the conversation at the table and how boring it is until I catch on and rejoin. It’s not something to pity and it’s not something to whine about, it’s just normal. I have no idea if the Esteem will change any of this; make any of this easier or different at all. I don’t even know if I would notice this change or if it would take somebody pointing it out for me to see. It all just comes down to what if.
What if this does change? What if I didn’t plan what movie to see based on what accents the actors might have? What if I don’t spend hours bored during mumbled speeches or classes? What if I can follow a conversation the whole time when I’m with my friends? What if that was normal? I just have no idea what that would be like. What if I get all excited about these things and then nothing changes? What if the clarity of my hearing gets better, like they say it will, but the amount of words I catch remains unchanged? Things wouldn’t be worse, maybe that’s all I should hope for right now. Things wouldn’t be worse but at least I could imagine wanting to plan a trip to a pool or a beach with my friends instead of dreading it. If that’s the only thing that changes, the only thing that gets better, what if that’s enough?
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