Teresa Garratty: What’s on my Christmas list? (the answer might surprise you)

It happens every year doesn’t it? The same old question and the older you get, the harder it is to answer.

“What would you like for Christmas?”

Friends, family, co-workers etc. They all want to get you something that isn’t a complete waste of money and ends up in the bin on Boxing Day.

Unfortunately, my go to response is never acceptable.

Alternatives don’t usually work that well either..

You can’t even seem to get away with suggesting to forego a gift completely.

One year, someone suggested that they would get me new ears if they could (they meant restore my natural level of hearing) and I thought that was very sweet but also, it made me realise that it wasn’t even really on my list.

I mean, I never would have actively chosen to lose my hearing in the first place but now that it’s happened, I’ve sort of got used to it.

A lot of the positives that have happened in my life are connected to my deafness and I’m not sure I’d want the upheaval of having to change again.

My deafness can sometimes feel like a nice warm fluffy security blanket, when I’m not feeling confident in myself. It’s a plausible excuse to avoid people and things. I’m aware that’s probably not very healthy but would I really enjoy the experience of giving that up?

How about you fellow deafies? If you could sit on Santa’s lap (in a totally un-creepy manner) and ask for absolutely anything you wanted, would one of those things be the ability to hear well? And I mean in a way that has no drawbacks, or strings attached.

Would that solve all your problems? Or just create new ones? (Remember to play nice in the comments section! It’s each to their own here, there’s no “Right”or “Wrong”!)

I honestly can’t say if that’s something I’d want which is a bit of a weird surprise, even for me! Why wouldn’t I want to become more “normal”? But that’s the thing isn’t it, being deaf is normal for me now.

There’s always far more worthy things to wish for at Christmas anyway…

Have a good one folks!

Read more of Teresa’s posts (with cartoons!) by clicking here.

Teresa is a freelance film maker, photographer and full time cynic. At school, she was voted “Most likely to end up in a lunatic asylum”, a fate which has thus far been avoided. Her pet hates are telephones, intercoms and all living things.