After reading all of these, I have to say, I have tears streaming down my face.
To be honest, when I stumbled across this website today, it was the first time that it dawned on me that I could finally be a part of a community of people that understand me. One that I truly belong to.
I was born HoH, because my mother experienced problems during labor and I was strangled in my umbilical cord (long enough to turn me blue, and lose oxygen to my brain long enough to profoundly affect my hearing forever.) Up until Kindergarten, everybody thought I was just ADHD, but then when my hearing loss was recognized, I obtained my first pair of hearing aids.
I've moved all over Colorado my whole life, and never spent more than 2 or 3 years max in any school. Can you imagine what it was like to constantly, almost every single school year, be introduced as "Meet Lillian, call her Lily, she wears hearing aids!"
I was tormented by my peers beyond belief as a kid, and all through middle and high school. In third grade, a few girls used to make the most twisted, ugliest faces at me and use that mock-retard voice and ask why I wasn't in special ed with all the down-syndrome children. Since I'm smart and have usually been in Advanced reading, english, etc. classes, hearing kids would get jealous that I, a "disabled" person, was able to excel in class without the use of a student aide or constant help from the teacher.
(this is my first post on this site, sorry it's so long, everyone.)
Since we moved around so much and the towns we lived in were small, my parents (however ignorant of them) thought that since I had hearing aids, I was fully part of the hearing community. As you all know, this was not the case. I was always "different" to everyone else, and most kids growing up see "different" as a contagious social disease that, if you're nice or friendly with "different", will prevent you from climbing whatever social pyramid everyone was so concerned with.
I had no friends, for a long time. I never had the chance to associate with other HoH or Deaf people, or learn sign language even though the doctors told my parents that any day, or upon an accident, I could entirely lose my hearing overnight. But, rather than go the hard way and learn ASL alongside me just in case this happened, I suffered more and more as my hearing has been lost over the years.
In 2006, an ex-boyfriend of mine had a poodle, who literally ate my $8,000 total hearing aids. Up until 2010, I survived almost entirely with lip-reading and empathetic friends.
I dropped out of school (an alternative high school, which I attended with another HoH girl that had an interpreter. I was so jealous, I wish I could fluently understand ASL)
It was the first day back from winter break, and we were all sitting in a huge circle in the classroom. The teacher asked me a question, the last word, the vital word to the question, making no sense to me without my Aids. I repeatedly tried to understand him, have him repeat it slower, and finally after five tries, he just started laughing AT me. you can tell that sick, sad, gnarly difference between being laughed at and being laughed with. and the class of 20 students broke up laughing with him. I cried, and dropped out until 2010.
I now have a 4.0 in my college classes, studying to be a Medical Assistant. My current teacher is spanish, and although I have NO predjudice whatsoever (how can I? I know how it feels. we all do.) SHE'S the one that has a discriminative attitude towards me. for three reasons:
1. I'm white, unlike her favorite students.
2. I'm smarter than her favorite students, and get better grades than them.
3. I'm smarter and make better grades with a DISABILITY.
I believe it's because of the above three reasons why she tries so hard to make it harder for me. I've walked out crying so many times because she'll walk around the BACK of the classroom during lectures, purposefully face the blackboard, so that when I ask for a repeat she can say that "I'm using my hearing loss as an excuse to slack off and not pay attention." and "I should try harder because with a hearing aid I shouldn't have a problem."
Sorry, MS. IGNORANTANDTOTALLYWORTHLESSHUMANBEING, that I'm making your life so hard. Go ahead and take your 10 or 15 minutes repeating everything you said to fully hearing-capable students that truly choose to slack off and not pay attention, while letting me try ten times as hard as them to understand everything and make it seem like 2 minutes to explain something to me is JUST SO HARD, when I'm paying $20,000 to go to this school.
I resent my parents for not extending to me the opportunity to be a part of my own community, and forcing me to pretend to be normal and always have to try so hard to catch up to the hearing world instead of being able to just be myself and be accepted by people just like me.