Day 7: Enchanted. No Longer Sure Why My Brain Catalogued This As Extremely Urgent To Be Written Down

Day 7: Enchanted. No longer sure why my brain catalogued this as Extremely Urgent To Be Written Down Immediately falling asleep a week ago but I have done as commanded by forces beyond my control in the realms of my subconscious. Perhaps I was unwittingly enchanted...

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ENCHANTED NUMBERS

FALL INTO PLACE LIKE GRAVESTONES;

TRAGIC AND HEAVY.

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AKB 2019

Hearing and History

12th April 2023

So, I recently found out that my level of hearing is a lot lower than I thought it was and probably always has been.

What does this mean? Basically I probably would've benefited from hearing aids and learning sign language as a child rather than relying on self-taught lip-reading, guesswork, and asking people to repeat themselves/be patient.

Let me tell you, people are not always good at being patient.

I have very mixed feelings about this. Listening is very tiring, and I have always said this! I couldn't do mental maths questions because they were on a tape recording. Ditto language listening and oral exams, which I kept failing at school. French was nearly impossible for me because I cannot hear the words or make sense of the month movements. Thank gd for Spanish!

I didn't have a hearing test until I was in secondary school. That policy has changed now in the NHS so hearing loss is picked up very soon after birth. Basically, there were a bunch of points in my life when someone could have intervened to give me the tools to navigate the world rather than just let me figure it out.

I am not part of the Deaf community. I don't know anybody my age who is hard of hearing or deaf. My family thought it was 'normal' because my mum, her sister, and my grandad all have hearing loss. I was teased for being deaf while simultaneously nobody taking the implications of my deafness seriously. It was a lose-lose situation. Essentially, it wasn't that I wasn't deaf enough, it was that it didn't effect me obviously enough for anyone to do anything.

Now I have hearing aids, I can hear music, I can hear lyrics. I can hear (although not focus on) multiple conversations. Birds are insanely fucking loud. Projectors and air-conditioning drive me up the wall. My tinnitus is definitely worse, but that may also be a side effect of long covid (apparently that's a thing). It's a wild experience that I'm still getting used to, a year later.

I would still love to learn sign language. But now's not a great time: I'm tired, working and studying full-time, recovering from covid, and generally have shit going on. British Sign Language lessons are expensive in person, but learning online is something I'd rather avoid as I can't concentrate easily. This means more travel, more money, more time, more energy. This means I have to wait.

I wish I could've had the chance to learn when I was first diagnosed.

TLDR; just because you can work to the point of exhaustion to fit the needs of the world, doesn't mean you should have to! You deserve accommodations. The world needs to bend so that people don't break.

crab 🦀

crash

"That's my psychological support husband!"

- actual quote from my mother who has no clue about memes or the internet or but sir, that's my emotional support anything... so,,, I guess everyone now and then humans go and reinvent well know tumblr phrases huh?

Day 2: Mindless? I certainly felt it. More of a doodle than anything... Now with free haiku!

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Brainless not mindless.

Sure, don't mean you can trust me...

Decide for yourself.

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AKB 2019

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A tree is growing

In a place it shouldn't be;

But it's beyond me.

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AKB 2020