deafdrummer
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- May 17, 2009
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Wow! Did you see what she said in the fourth episode, when she said, "I'd try to get back to a... erm, a more... primal way of being that, that we seem... to have lost as... as homo sapiens become more civilized ... and developed speech?" She is the first person in the world to have understood my perspective without my having to explain it to her. That is what I am, a cave woman (I didn't grow up in a cave, but I did live in a relatively undeveloped way with a very small vocabulary for a much longer time than is normally allowed in modern civilization, and I remember nearly all of this time frame, which was from about 2 and a half until 7 and a half, when I was finally found to be deaf). What she said is about me. That is how I am with people. It seems that my ideal partner would be someone who understands this, or in another uncivilized or natural world, would be someone who could simply read my emotional cues, and I do the same of hers, and we interact in that uncivilized state, where there is no language, never mind the trappings of civilization that stands in between us. I think that the reason I have so much trouble with dating is because I don't use civilized "social interfaces" like the average person exposed at a young age does. I don't dress the "right way," I don't do the "right things," and I don't say the things that are expected of me, etc. I still exist in that state. I can shut off the amygdala, which has to do with the inner voice that those of us can hear inside our heads, so that it goes silent and I enter a state in which I feel exactly what I did when I was on a camping trip with my parents while I was still lingually-isolated. I would look at my surroundings outside the camping trailer, feel the chill in the late fall air of the evening, and smell the burning of mesquite wood in the campfire. Just as I would have lived 5,000 years ago or longer minus the modern trappings of camping equipment. I received no customs training (except what was visible, such as clothes, toys, but nothing about manners, what to say, not to say, religion, Santa Claus, Halloween, the mental and verbal concepts of modern civilization of the time). I can still remember this very clearly. I can remember the time when I didn't yet know math, how to communicate, tell time, that everything was supposed to have a name, etc. In nearly all people except those with strong memories, this experience is normally very short before the child learns to speak sufficiently, and it is largely forgotten. I didn't get out of this stage until I was 7 and a half.
At first, I thought it was my deafness, and it certainly was a contributing factor that allowed me to exist in this natural state (had I been hearing surrounded by people who didn't know language yet), but then I thought (and here it is, my coming out right here on alldeaf), it would be my transsexualism. Some of my employer staff know about it, but most don't, so I'm not worried, as I am a protected employee under the company's nondiscrimination policy. Anyway, it is another contributing factor. I don't want to do the things men do to court women, because it doesn't feel right to me, though I love women. Again, just a contributing factor, but not the whole answer. It is the fact that I lived in a linguistically-isolated state, and it is the most comfortable state for me because it's what I developed in during that critical stage in my childhood.
Once I understood this clearly, it began to make sense why I view a lot of things in society as requiring effort. It seems like work, like "Why do I hafta do this??? Le'e me alone!" (slams door hard) I have a natural tendency to pulling back from many things, drumming included (because it feels just like pre-school to me - why, why??? I want to play with my toys or simply watch things happen around me! What is this black stuff on thin white things??? [except that I wondered what was this, what I later learned was text on white paper once I learned how to read, without having the words to ask, "What is this?" but this emotional state I had when I saw something I didn't understand and wondered what it was, like food I had never seen before in a store or a restaurant]) I have this natural tendency to pull back, to retreat to a state of simply being and doing things only I want to do. What Sophie is saying is that we have forgotten how to "simply be."
I'm going to dig up her contact info and share this with her, because she may not know of people like myself.
