Deafness and simply being

deafdrummer

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I want to write about my experiences of what it was like growing up and how I see the world today.

I grew up, having lost my hearing as a baby. I apparently started saying a word or two at two months old and added on two more in my first year (according to my baby book), but by the time I was four, my vocabulary was very limited. I remember having my Mom's anatomy book out and looking at the cellophane pages of the various systems of the human body. What I don't remember is getting my Mom's attention to the book by pointing at the head and crying myself to sleep on top of the book when it was obvious Mom didn't understand that I was trying to show her that I had gone deaf (I still couldn't talk in complete sentences) - Mom told me about that one day as an adult. She said that I had done that for about two years or so. Opening the book, getting Mom to look at it, and crying myself to sleep sometimes. I realized that I had gone deaf and tried to tell her.

It wouldn't be until I was seven before they did a hearing test to confirm my deafness. After I had already gone through kindergarten and failed the first grade. I was thought to be retarded or otherwise mentally damaged for several months, and I remember something strange happening in one of the Corpus Christi-area special needs schools. It wasn't until I was past seven and a half before I entered the school for the deaf and was being taught in a proper environment. It wasn't until a year later before I had a sufficient vocabulary to understand what was going on around me. I don't remember much of the actual learning of words (I guess I did so much so quickly that it was a blur, and I only remember the Christmas play that year and having no idea why I was on stage as an angel, learning about water disappearing in a dish, leaving behind the salt, visiting one of the student's family farm, seeing a shedded skin of a snake in a teacher's car, the helicopter putting antennas on top of the building behind the school, the cafeteria, the TB shot, etc.).

Before I go further, I want to make clear that this is not a debate on religion, whether I should be a christian or a jew, or whatever. I simply want to describe what life has been like for me, and to find others like myself. I feel like in America, where documented feral children are very rare, I am alone. I feel like I am between a civilized person and a natural person (someone who would have lived life in the early paleolithic stone age, before advanced tool making and agriculture appeared in later stone ages). In all my writings, I present to you my civilized image. What I want to show you here is ME. I struggle to "simply be." I am torn between the trappings and the lifestyle of a "modern, civilized human" who wants computers, a fun vehicle to drive, lots of things to do for fun and building a life for myself, and the simplicity of a Stone Age person in a natural setting (though they probably were searching for shelter and food all the time and didn't have time to do much else, BUT their minds were probably free of all the clutter we deal with today).

Picking up from where I left off. I had never been exposed to christianity verbally until I was eight and a half. Suffice it is to say that by that time, it was too late to be taught religion as the one right thing to base the entire world on. I couldn't believe what my nanny had told me when I was chastised for cussing. I couldn't believe my ears. No way. A grown woman believed this? You have to understand. I had gone to church with my parents (Mom, mainly) without having a clue as to why we dressed a certain way, stood up and sat down several times at the benches, opened this thing that had white flat things with small black things with lines on them. Up front was this man behind this structure, and he stood there the whole time. Later, we kids went off into small rooms with small chairs that we didn't have to climb up to sit in. I remember in there a man in his late 40s or early 50s with graying hair and mustache, and glasses. He moved about in an animated manner, looking at us intently as he moved his mouth and held this same object (the bible is what I'm referring to). And... The building had a peculiar smell that only churches have. Anyhow, I had no idea what was going on there.

So, I came to a worldview of my own. One that is unspoken. It's a worldview that I've carried intact from childhood. There are no words to describe it because I had to live within myself without a vocabulary; no one knew that I was deaf until I was past seven, and by the time I was eight and a half, it was too late to change it. My worldview had already taken hold. Every time I have tried to find a way to explain it, I feel this huge feeling of something that I cannot describe, but it is scary because it's so big. Unlike most people who are religious, there is not this god or gods that is an entity above me that speaks to me in english. There is something I experience, which I can't explain very well. To say that it is a part of me, and I am a part of it is a poor approximation. I may be merely an extension of this awareness that created all that we know, and I may be providing feedback through wishes and desires; it's like I ask for something, and sometimes, the universe responds. Other than that, it's impossible to describe what it is I feel on a daily basis. I just know all this came about for some reason. Why do we have trees, animals, hands with opposing thumbs, hair, straight lines in buildings, etc.? There is a reason for all this.

Now, I will mention that I had been sent to Sunday school after I was underway in grade school, but it never took. It was like muslims being sent there only to learn about the belief system of a christian. They will examine it closely, but they will not necessarily make it their own. As the muslim has a belief, so do I. The difference is, s/he can explain his/her belief, I cannot. I can only experience it at the moment, merely by simply being, being aware of it.

My request is simply this. Please come forward, if you have had the experience of developing a human-languageless awareness of a world, how it works, and a sense of awareness (that we are a part of something very big), and you are not religious, but spiritual in this sense. I do not know of anyone else like me. I feel like I am largely wild (or natural, as some might say), like a horse born in the wild and captured while less than two years old. Because of this, I have a tendency to be quiet for long periods of time, because I learned to live in long spans of time without saying anything. People become uncomfortable with this silence in social settings and don't know what to make of it. (what did people say or do around the Stone Age fire before verbal language started getting underway?)
 
:wave: dd

:ty: for sharing that. I think I can understand and identify with many parts of it. Not that I know exactly how you are being and your experience. That is your own. But I know that I see myself as a spiritual person but not at all as a religious person. I know that lotta times, how I understand something has no words. I can see energy and see what I mean but hard to speak it or label it.
And the act of labeling it, itself changes the meaning, changes the essence. Like trying to box the wind.

I spoke very late and would take my parents by the hand and try to lead them where I wanted to go, and gesture, and try to show them the books I wanted.
I always loved books and loved to go through the pages before I could read. Some people had hard time understanding me
I spent a lot of time by myself and silently, because of the above, and also because I was an only child, and a shy kid and had some early peer interaction issues or social sensitivity.

I also have a tendency to be quiet and feel things, to watch things.
One time I was at a pre-college university camp for a week and the campers were paired off by two, each duo slept in one of the dorm rooms on the college campus where we attempting to simulate "going to college". My roommate was reading a book on her bed and I sat and watched her. I didn't think anything would be wrong with it and I didn't realize I was staring. She said I was weird and creepy and complained to the person acting as RA <Resident Assistant> that I was staring at her.

I've learned to more emulate from other people do.
But I often feel as though I'm going between a bunch of different worlds - Jewish vs. non, Deaf vs. hearing...my own way of Being vs. typical way.
 
I've been deaf since I was 2 years old. I'm now 34. I did not have many friends that were deaf. I did have some, but my family were all hearing. They knew sign language, but I often had a long period of silence. NO sounds, no one talked to me.

I would rather read newspaper than to hold conversations with other people. Even now, though I have a girlfriend who loves me for who I am, I still prefer to sit back and read newspaper rather than to hold conversations. Not that I hate conversations, but I've often been loner.

So, I understand where you're coming from having a long span of time without saying anything.
 
I would rather read newspaper than to hold conversations with other people.

I think that disliking conversations is a consequence of being deaf/HoH.

Last night someone started a conversation with me and as they talked on I thought 'I hope this isn't going to last too long'. Having a long conversation with someone involves such alot of concentration and effort in order to understand what they are on about!
 
I think that disliking conversations is a consequence of being deaf/HoH.

Last night someone started a conversation with me and as they talked on I thought 'I hope this isn't going to last too long'. Having a long conversation with someone involves such alot of concentration and effort in order to understand what they are on about!

Yeah, It takes a lot of concentrations and effort. See, when I'm with my deaf friends, I can sign fluently. When I'm with my hearing friends, I've to go slow with ASL. It does take effort.
 
I'm more fixated on the fact that I'm not religious, and I'm looking for others who are not religious, but spiritually wild or free. I'm looking for others who managed to carry intact their childhood world of being without religion and yet being connected with the world without language into adulthood. Most children, because of how young they are when they enter the church, forget and don't remember what it was like before that time. I lived in it long enough to an old enough age that I can't forget it and trying to kluge any religion into my life as a bedrock always fails. It feel like having a structure superimposed over something that is indefinite, but definitely me. Like my views get torn apart and shoved into boxes, barrels, spheres, and what have you. The way I feel about it, some people consider religion their bedrock, but I consider the ground that lies under that bedrock as my foundation.

There are plenty of deaf who were discovered in time and taken to church after being diagnosed and taught to communicate, but very few who went undetected as deaf long enough to create an independent worldview on spirituality.
 
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