Sunil Suri: What it’s like to be moderately deaf

It was recently Deaf Awareness Week in the UK so I thought I’d write about my experiences of being deaf, which I’ve never done before.

I’m one of an estimated 9 million people in the UK that are deaf or hard of hearing. There are four levels of hearing loss severity: mild, moderate, severe and profound.

I was born moderately deaf and am actually classified as being disabled. People are often surprised by that when they meet me because my hearing aids are well-hidden (black with black hair) and they can’t tell from speaking to me.

Not for nothing is deafness called the hidden disability.

How deaf are you? It’s a question I get asked often. It’s very difficult to explain what being moderately deaf means in practice. The only other person I know who is deaf is my auntie and she is severely deaf.

I can tell she is deafer than me because of several things, but especially because of her absolute need for the person she is speaking to be facing her.

In my case, I strongly prefer to be facing the person I am speaking to, but it doesn’t always mean I won’t be able to hear them.

Despite this, I only really know two types of hearing: my own as it is and mine with the support of hearing aids. The latter is what I imagine it is like to get 20/20 vision after putting on glasses, but again I don’t know that for certain.

Can you repeat what you just said? Can you speak louder? Growing up, these were the two questions I was most scared of asking, but most needed to. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself or risk appearing stupid.

I wonder whether this is still a stigma for deaf children in mainstream schools. I’m guessing it still is.

Today I’m much more bullish. I tend to call people out for not speaking loudly enough and announce to whatever room that I’m in that I’m deaf.

When I was younger (and still sometimes today), I used to get accused of having selective hearing. It used to frustrate me because almost of all the time when I was accused of having selective hearing I didn’t hear but I’d play along with the joke.

One of things that I find most difficult is listening (specifically for a long time, while trying to simultaneously take notes or in a noisy place) as it actually requires more energy to maintain focus when your ears are working harder to hear.

I suspect this is quite hard to grasp if you have good hearing. But think of how much you strain to hear someone speak in a noisy place and that is the kind of energy you have to expend on a daily basis.

This also means that my experience of music is also impacted by my deafness. I often struggle to hear music and find it particularly difficult to hear song lyrics.

In fact, my brain sometimes guesses the words that the lyrics sound like meaning I can actually be singing a totally different song. My first experience of this actually occurred when I read the insert to the first album I bought, Californication by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and I was surprised at a couple of lines where I’d essentially made up my own lyrics.

My recall of songs much like my ability to learn language has been been diminished by the challenges I face in listening. But regardless of my ability to hear the music, you can often find me on the dance floor which to me illustrates how intrinsic music is to human nature.

Being moderately deaf has undoubtedly made my life more difficult from participating in everyday conversations to negative classroom experiences growing up.

In a strange way though, I am grateful for the daily reminder of my own fallibility as it has given me a physical humility from a very young age.

But this experience is not unique to me. Everyone gets deafer as they get older, so if you are not deaf and are reading this, you are likely to experience some of the difficulties I’ve described.

Sunil lives in London where he works for a charity called Catch22, supporting social entrepreneurs who have ideas that have the potential to positively impact the delivery of public services. Outside of work, he loves to write, read, run and do yoga — all to varying degrees of success. You can learn more about him or sign up to his monthly newsletter on his website.