How a Disability Became My Greatest Strength

I didn’t know how bad it was.

Not until the grocery store clerk yelled at me.

I’d asked him several times to repeat the total. But each time he turned away from me so I couldn’t see his face.

Then he shouted it at me.

I wanted to cry.

I handed him the money and walked out with my food.

I was in my early 30s, diagnosed with bi-lateral hearing loss. The technology was so rudimentary at the time that hearing aids were not a good option for me.

So I lived with it.

Or so I thought.

It was exhausting.

I started to withdraw, feeling more introverted, missing the quick banter between friends.

Humor lies in the timing, the quickness, sometimes half-mumbled. It is only funny when you catch it the first time.

I couldn’t understand what my grandchildren were saying to me in the back seat of my car.

I couldn’t bear to ask them “what?” one more time.

I was losing confidence. Over time, hearing loss effects cognition.

One day, I saw a young personal trainer pull hearing aids out of her ears. I marched across the room and asked her all about them.

She enthusiastically told me how they made her life normal, how easy they were.

I made an appointment to see my audiologist the next day.

Some people hate the sound of their own voice.

Not me.

The first time I heard my own voice, really heard it from inside my own head, I cried.

It was some 20 years after this humiliating moment with grocery store clerk.

The audiologist had just put my new high-tech hearing aids into my ears.

She played classical music. I cried some more.

She stood behind me and spoke. I could understand every last word she said.

I drank up the sound.

I’d been living in a muted, muffled world for so long that I didn’t even know what I was missing until like magic, the audiologist returned me to the full world of sound.

My tears were of gratitude and for the sheer beauty of sound — music, my own voice.

And also, they were the tears of self-empathy and compassion.

I’d been working so hard to engage in life — way harder than those with normal hearing.

My humor returned. I was able to engage with life.

With hearing aids, I felt young again — quick, funny, engaged.

The audiologist warned me that some things — like the sound of a toilet flushing — might sound very loud.

It might take some time to adjust, she said.

The first time I heard the toilet flush with my hearing aids in, I wanted to throw a party.

I flushed again.

Oh, sweet sound. Crashing and sudden, the sound of water roaring.