Don’t romanticize it.

When a person says that they’d just love to have my experience I just want to say, “Really? You want the frequent headaches, the ringing sound in your head that’s not really there but you’re beyond exhausted like all the time that at this point being tired is just a continuous state of being for you, and no amount of sleep can alleviate your constant dread of social situations and being in noisy places and second guessing yourself ALL THE TIME even when you know there’s no reason to but its just that being deaf is like having a phantom sense and you’re always wondering if there’s a sound there or if something’s happening here and you’re not hearing it but no worries because someone will be there to make you feel like a total piece shit for not hearing them speaking to you?”

Let me know how that goes as you realize it’s not a simple matter of plugging up your ears.

Not trusting that your peers have your best interests in mind when it comes to selecting an activity that won’t cause you stress and anxiety because of your hearing, while dealing with the backlash as you are accused of not having enough faith in others, when, ironically, you’ve had to explain to those same people many times why you don’t answer the phone or why you’re over the loud, crowded bar scene or why that guy’s looking at you funny because of your accent.

And then they proceed to tell you that it’s all in your head.

I’m not fucking dealing with this in 2018. Get out of my face with my shit.

Is this my trauma?

I was up at 3 in the morning after a heavy conversation with my best, pouring forth my unfiltered thoughts and gutting my heart on paper the stream of consciousness of a deaf, black male who has to balance those two predominant spheres (along with being queer) while battling the never ending introspective thoughts that constantly make me question my self worth and whether or not my friends are REALLY my friends, or just people who pity me and are being polite while I misread all of their cues and tones, all the while addressing the fact that I have avoided confronting the real issue that my disability is an obstacle when it comes to building genuine (ergo, romantic) relationships, while people won’t actually SAY it….we all know it’s there, and it’s great that I’m like this “AMAZINGWONDERFULGENUINETALENTEDFUNNY” guy, but I’m still “too deaf,” “too black,” “too intimidating.” And internalizing THIS message, this stream of consciousness, in a way that people cannot look at me and go, “Nah, you’re being a #paranoidminority” or “you’re #attentionseeking and #playingthevictim” because we are often taught that our experiences are invalid. That it’s all in our heads. But it’s me holding up a portrait of myself that contains fragments belonging to different places while not fully belonging anywhere.

I’m not asking for pity or your opinion. There isn’t a right or wrong. It’s just me. My experiences as the results of biology and fucked up circumstances and being a clusterfuck of star stuff.

Yeah that’s my headspace.

Pretend you’ve got a four year old constantly asking you to stop and look at something they’ve got in their hand. You know they don’t mean any harm, but after a while it gets annoying and tiresome to have to continuallystop and turn around and figure out what the child wants. That is how I feel when hearing people talk to me, and around me, constantly, without making sure they have my attention first.

It disgusts me how many adults in my life have tried to raise me as a hearing person. It’s their secret way of saying, “No. We don’t accept this.” And to think how I’m not the only one. It happens to all of us, everyone, in different ways. And not just deaf and hard of hearing people.

When you keep saying “huh?” or “what?” and keep leaning in, but they still don’t understand how to observe and understand what’s going on…

Life is either constantly looking around to pretend that you are hearing things like everybody else or isolating yourself to not give a damn. There is no middle ground.

I’m not sure if I think any of us are obligated to apologize to some hearing people for making them feel uncomfortable for five seconds when we are uncomfortable in their world for a lifetime.

Nobody ever takes you seriously. They’re all too blown away by the fact that you can speak and breathe, and do things like other people. It’s like you’re some other creature pretending to be human. They don’t see you for who you really are, and then wonder why we either overcompensate or retreat and isolate ourselves.

It’s funny how everybody wants to talk about mental illness and depression, but hardly anybody is willing to engage in a conversation upon which we discuss how deafness and/or central auditory processing disorder are oftentimes a huge contributor to anxiety and depression on so many levels. Not only are you constantly navigating an isolating world where you cannot always rely on your ears or your brain to process sound, but you have to understand how other people communicate, worry about accommodations and accessibility, strain yourself physically and mentally in order to mainstream, deal with numerous embarrassing situations that require a thicker skin than most, combat audism in your community, oftentimes family, friends, and coworkers, miss out on many activities and conversations, and struggle every day with accepting your limitations. There millions of us all over the world. Why are we not talking about this?

*Reminding yourself to break eye contact every few seconds to avoid making them self-conscious about the fact that you’re looking at them closely only because that’s your normal and you need to understand them and it has nothing to do with the actual layout of their face….unless you’re talking to someone you like and it does. In that case, you’re just kind of screwed. Especially if you’re also a boy that likes boys and need to make it not obvious.*

HOH tip

Sandwich yourself in between two hearies at all possible times when out and about to create a halo of hearing detectors.

Reblog if you have ever been scolded as a child (and as an adult) for not realizing that someone was talking to you.

Autistic adulting is when, after working at a job for TWO YEARS, and fighting for accommodations for TWO YEARS, you are…still fighting.

I am so exhausted.  Of course, Auditory Processing Disorder isn’t a “simple” disability to understand.  Being entirely Deaf is “simple”.  You can’t hear. Anything, at all, ever. Okay, they understand that.

But APD?  When I can hear, but only sometimes and under certain conditions, and not under other conditions?  Suddenly, everyone’s too stupid to understand.  Nobody “believes” me, even though I have FUCKING MEDICAL DOCUMENTATION.  Even though I have GOVERNMENT APPROVED REASONALBE ACCOMODATIONS for it.  Even though I’ve gone to the UNION over it, gotten some extremely high-up people involved to tell my manager “you have to do these accommodations for this employee”.

Even then, when she’s told she MUST do my accomodations, she still doesn’t care to learn what those accommodations ARE.  Or when I might need them.  Or why I need them.

And frankly, she doesn’t really have to?  Just treat me the same as a Deaf person, then!  Then just ALWAYS communicate with me in non-auditory ways!  You don’t HAVE to understand the nuances of APD- just be like “Snazzy can’t hear” in your head, and act accordingly!  That would be FINE!

But instead, they schecule Skype voice meetings, no matter how many times I’ve explained that sound over a computer is SHIT and I can’t hear over Skype meetings, PERIOD.  “But you can hear over the phone”. YES! That’s a DIFFERENT LEVEL OF SOUND QUALITY!  Phones are very good at carrying sound, so yes, I can hear over the phone, but not over the Skype, that is NOT THAT HARD TO COMPREHEND.

It also doesn’t MATTER, because I can get captions over the phone, but NOT over Skype, because the captioners don’t have access to our internal Skype so they can’t log in.  So I can’t get captions, so you can’t do Skype meetings when I need to attend! Period!  

I’VE BEEN SCREAMING THIS FOR TWO YEARS.

I’m exhausted.  I’m crying.  All I want is to be able to attend the meeting about the PROGRAM THAT I WROTE.  You can’t have the meeting without me, because I’m the person with all the information on this particular subject!  It’s useless to you to have a meeting where I can’t participate!

*SCREAMS*