Being someone who was born severely-deaf in an all-hearing environment and raised oral I guess you can say I can understand the mindset of Hearing people. Hearing see me as hard-of-hearing because I can hear loud noise but not speech. Their concept of deaf is stone-deaf (cannot hear anything at all - complete silence). They generally see me as hearing as I have grown up speaking. Up to 2009, I saw myself as a 'broken' Hearie because that is how everyone around me views me even now. However when I finally discovered the Deaf Community, I discovered there were other people who had the same mindset as me, viewed things the same I did, and understood what I faced in life. I realized then I had an identity separate from the hearing world that I was struggling so hard to be a part of. So, now I have opted for that which comes naturally to me instead of being someone Im not.
