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Hurt. Denial. Fear. Depression. Bewilderment. Anger. Disappointment. Resentment. Grief. Everyone who experiences major hearing loss as an adult goes through the entire array of emotions. Some days you’re ready to kill the cashier at the store, because you can’t hear the total or see the screen and she won’t write it down. Other days you laugh so hard you pee in your pants when your body-building friend tells you that, because his friends weren’t around, he had to do his sets all alone that day, and you misread “sets” as “sex.” Still other days you sit alone in your room, feeling completely isolated and left out—sure that you will never be able to have a “normal,” causal conversation again. You go through so many different feelings within even one day, that you start suspecting you may have multiple personalities.
What you don’t feel, or even realize, is that what you’re experiencing is completely normal for anyone with such a major change in his or her life. So, what do you do? How do you cope? Well, there’s a ton of suggestions available out there—whether you ask for them or not.
“Learn Sign Language.”
“Practice lipreading. It can’t be that difficult.”
“Just get over it.”
“Join the local deaf community and get involved.”
“Eat green tomatoes on Wednesday at 6 PM.”
Humor. There’s nothing funny about living your life as a hearing person and then being thrust into a world of silence. There’s no negating that fact. But if you stop and try…really try…to see if you can find something in the situation (even if in retrospect) that can help make you smile, eventually you’ll find yourself agreeing with the old saying: “Life is short, so laugh it up!” Or, in lipreading, that might be: “Lie for sure. Do I have a gun?” Fitting, wouldn’t you say?
What you don’t feel, or even realize, is that what you’re experiencing is completely normal for anyone with such a major change in his or her life. So, what do you do? How do you cope? Well, there’s a ton of suggestions available out there—whether you ask for them or not.
“Learn Sign Language.”
“Practice lipreading. It can’t be that difficult.”
“Just get over it.”
“Join the local deaf community and get involved.”
“Eat green tomatoes on Wednesday at 6 PM.”
Humor. There’s nothing funny about living your life as a hearing person and then being thrust into a world of silence. There’s no negating that fact. But if you stop and try…really try…to see if you can find something in the situation (even if in retrospect) that can help make you smile, eventually you’ll find yourself agreeing with the old saying: “Life is short, so laugh it up!” Or, in lipreading, that might be: “Lie for sure. Do I have a gun?” Fitting, wouldn’t you say?
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