Zeinab El: My journey towards accepting and living with hearing loss, so far (BSL)

I’m a hearing-impaired, Egyptian woman in my thirties. My journey towards hearing loss enlightenment has just started two years ago. That wasn’t because I lost my hearing at that time. No, I’ve been hard of hearing since I was a child. When exactly and why, I’ll probably never know.

I started using hearing aids also quite late, only about 10 years ago. My mother knew I didn’t hear well. She used to ask teachers in my primary school to allow me sit on the first bench which was only met during the first two academic years out of five. That was all.

No one, my mother, teachers or even ear doctors, ever discussed what else I needed to hear better. It might have been so because I did very well during most of my academic years. When I stumbled in math in my 2nd grade of preparatory school, I rapidly got back on track thanks to after-school private lessons.

I kept putting that extra effort since a young age to keep up with school and people. I performed the role of a normal-hearing child to the best of my ability. I also never talked about my hearing impairment with anybody until I got hearing aids. I didn’t actually tell everybody, even those close to me.

Since I was wearing a hijab, no one could see them. Now, I understand that hijab helped me hide my hearing aids and consequently, my hearing loss. When I finally spoke about it, all that I shared was that I was hard of hearing. I explained nothing about what I needed to hear them better and to make communication easier.

To a great extent, I feared being stigmatized by my disability. At the same time, I was completely ignorant about my hearing loss.

Nevertheless, throughout my life, I could somehow connect some difficulties to hearing loss like: struggling with understanding speech from a distance and/or in noisy contexts, mishearing a lot, missing social cues, mispronunciation and inability of distinguishing many sounds, better understanding speech when seeing people’s faces, etc.

Nevertheless, it never crossed my mind how hearing loss altered the way I dealt with people and shook my self-confidence. I didn’t know I had to explain the hearing loss difficulties so people don’t get me wrong. Most people thought I tended to ignore them while in fact, I didn’t hear them.

Moreover, I didn’t understand I preferred to do online jobs to avoid “hearing”, and mishearing, people. I unconsciously isolated myself due to my hearing loss which had a toll on my personality, mind and attitude.

Years passed and I kept masking my disability. One of the most challenging situations I’ve ever encountered in my life was the reason behind my late enlightenment.

When my ex broke up with me, he said that our communication wasn’t working and added that I was giving him irrelevant answers. I vividly remember that day; he was sitting over on the bed while I was standing close to the door in our cabana in Kalpitiya, Sri Lanka.

I had to explain that I answered him according to what I heard, in that case, according to what I misheard. I felt embarrassed but he too looked embarrassed for being inconsiderate. He looked like a little kid who was ashamed of what he did. He didn’t comment or say anything afterwards.

When I asked when I could leave, he insisted that we could stay as “just friends”. At that moment, I wasn’t only broken up with but harshly confronted by the ugly side of hearing loss, alone, far away from my home, family and friends and even without enough money to book a flight back.

If that was how my ex, who knew about my hearing impairment, reacted to my mishearing, so what about those I didn’t tell them I was hearing impaired? And those were many. Those who didn’t know me well thought of me as arrogant or stupid.

On the other hand, those who knew me personally thought I was introvert, shy, weak or not a good communicator. I didn’t communicate well with people because I didn’t hear them.

In addition, I didn’t know I had the right to ask these people for accommodations and that sharing such information was crucial to maintain conversations and relationships accordingly.

After that situation, I felt I was missing some major information about my hearing loss. For the first time in my life, I could see from a different lens that huge gap between me and people, mainly due to my silence about my hearing loss. And that was the trigger that moved me to look for answers.

I came back home shattered into pieces after Sabine, a dear friend, had stepped in and booked me a flight back. Though being determined to collect my shattered self and learn about my disability, I felt lost and I didn’t know how and where to seek information.

I used to exchange languages with Shekinah, an American compassionate lady who was interested in learning Arabic. I vented to her about the breakup, heartbreaking and my hearing loss. She recommended that I could look for groups of people like me on social media.

Right after that, I joined a few hearing loss forums and groups and read a lot of articles and posts. That was like opening the window of a room that has been closed and dark for many years. A lot of the information made sense.

There were many hard-of-hearing people out there who faced the same obstacles as me. Understanding these problems clarified a lot about myself and how my hearing loss affected my life physically, mentally and socially.

Being aware of how important to speak up about my hearing loss and what I need to hear better obviously boosted my self-confidence.

Now, I want to share what I know and persevere as a hearing-impaired woman with everybody. I want to speak out loud after years of silence and confusion. It’s why I’m sharing that with you.

I hope you find my writing useful. And I hope it will save someone from stumbling over what I went through.

You can follow Zeinab’s writing here