I’ve been reading the posts and comments in Somewhat Silent the past days. I was able to compare and evaluate myself and my experiences with the other members and I came to the conclusion that I was the coward one. L
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The Athina Psychology
Back when I was only eight years old and in Grade II, we had this multiplication and division contest in Math. Our class was divided into Team A and? Team B. I belonged to Team A. We had to solve simple multiplication and division problems on the board. Our teacher cant control the class because we were having fun and were so excited, all wanting to win. Even though our teacher warned us not to coach, coach we did. We whispered the answer to whoever was on the board. When it was my turn I tried hard to solve the problem and if left alone I could have easily solved it. But I got confused because my team mates kept whispering the answer to me which I can’t understand. To make the long story short, my team lost because of me. Oh, how my team mates hated me. They were exasperated with me and they don’t want to be friends with me anymore. Kids can be cruel also. As Sara has put it, it can be horribly painful. This sad experience made me loathe math all my life and significantly affected my attitude towards my disability in a negative way. It dented and warped my personality.
My parents and my siblings were aware I was hurting inside because of this disability so they went out of their way to help me and make life easier for me. It’s them all the time who made adjustments or concessions so that I can cope. I grew up denying and trying to hide my disability as best as I could instead of facing it and making adjustments myself. I never made an effort to learn sign language. I find it embarrassing. I never used a note pad to help me communicate. I avoided situations where I could be ‘exposed’. I tried to put on a snobbish air so people will avoid approaching me and talking to me. But at home, I’m my real self. I can lip read all my family members who tried to talk to me. Home is a safe place. Home will never hurt me.
On one of my visits to my audiologist, I read an ad about a hearing aid posted on the wall of the clinic. It said that? wearing a hearing aid will mean my family members and friends will no longer have to shout, or make a lot of gestures to be able to communicate with me. Then I came to realize how I have been putting so much burden to my family when I can make an effort, face my disability and make adjustments myself. I felt selfish.
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Face It
This morning, I was left with no choice but to go to the post office myself. There’s no one in the house who can run errand for me. I have to check if the parcel I’ve been waiting for has arrived already. So I wrote clearly in a piece of typing paper my predicament and my purpose J (Sara’s advice) and gave it to the clerk. The clerk read it carefully, gestured to me to sit down and wait. She went inside to look for my parcel then came back and wrote on the paper that the parcel has not arrived yet. I asked some more info and she wrote her reply again. Oh, you should know how relieved I was. The clerk was kind and helpful. It didn’t even show in her facial expression that she found me queer, whatever. And I suspect I brought novelty and excitement to her drab and dreary work as a postal clerk that morning. J The negative feelings I dread like embarrassment, self pity, pain, even rage did not present itself during this situation because I chose to face it! That’s like winning to me.
Desi x
I’m afraid if Desi happen by, he will laugh and find me hilarious. But people are different. There are brave people and there are coward ones. People can be brave in facing many things but can be coward also in other things. Some non-deaf? people should be more tolerant. Tolerance might be a form of courage also. J Some things which are very ordinary and commonplace to some are a matter of life and death to others.? Here is the concrete example of pain.
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May 2nd, 2006 at 6:57 pm
wow Athina, powerful story! Thank you for sharing with us, on a lighter note, I never could get maths and I HATE it I mean really HATE it even to this day with a passion, and nothing like what happend to you *which was terrible, kids can be horrid! but with numbers always and even now, I just go blank!! I dunno what to do and I actually panic, I just dont get math at all!! I can barely use a calculater!!! I avoid it at all costs, even with money im so careless, hmmm….that really has to change!…
*oh Thank you for the comments on my fotos!
Anyway what im trying to say is, dont worry about the Math (Ur missing nothing!!)
but it was horrible what happened to put you off it 
& HUGS,
and as for what other people think, like DesiX , screw em!! after all its only an opinion, everyone is intitled to an opinion, but they are also entitled to manners and common curtosy, and he had none of those
so work with a little Irish Philosophy,
*Keep those who care and make you happy around you, as for everyone else, forget them!!
Also, I went thru hiding my trouble too, but its wonderful when you finally let go and accept the fact that yes I have a disibility, but I have gained other skills because of it, ie Lip reading, thats wonderful to have, and you feel much freer when ur open about it, and ull find more often than not people are more than willing to help you as much as they can
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:19 am
Ha-ha! You believed my sob story.:) Yes I loathe math. Of course
I can do the four fundamental operations but I hate square roots,
y-x=z, and the fractions.:) But it’s weird because I love Geometry.
And when I learned CS Lewis, the Oxford don was also poor in Math
but good in Geometry I felt I found an ally. Lol.
And yes I feel free but I regret the long time I spent hiding
inside my shell. How foolish I had been. Thanks for the hugs,
lette. Thanks, to all.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:55 pm
well you see I wasnt there when we did the ‘X’ times tabled :p
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Athina-
I had similar experiences to yours while in elementary school. Particularly with spelling bees. The teacher would say a word, and I’d spell back what I thought I had heard, and often times I was wrong. Funny thing is, the teacher didn’t tell me that I was wrong, and it wasn’t until later when the kids gave me a hard time about it, that I realized that I was wrong. The teacher understood that I couldn’t hear it, but the kids thought I was trying to get out of spelling the right word. I felt horribly foolish as a result, and to this day I *hate* spontaneously pitching in with information, or responding to any short bit of information without confirming what it is that I thought I heard.
Childhood experiences can be intense, far beyond the intensity that we’d expect of them with our more logical and wiser adult minds. Sadly, they can make us gun shy in a lot of ways. Afraid to do things, because we remember them as being attached to intense humiliation.
You’re not foolish at all for hiding. I think we all go through periods of hiding, before we realize all the different things that we can do to make the hiding unnecessary.
Thanks for sharing this on somewhatsilent. And if Desie comes back and says so much as a single mocking word, I’ll ban him.
I’m glad your experience at the post office was a good one, though.
Isn’t writing things down liberating? I always thought I’d feel strangely about doing it- like I was making myself more disabled. Then I realized that by doing it, I was releasing myself from a lot of anxiety, and taking the lead in how others should deal with me. It’s actually quite a wonderful stress reliever.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Athina: I’m glad the post-office experience went well and that the person took their time to be helpful. I have had similar experiences where people have been really good, gestured at me, and pointed and written things down.
I’ve also had crappy ones, but I avoid them by avoiding the people who are crap. My bank will be changed as soon as my overdraft is paid off - their tellers always talk to each other while dealing with me, and shout at me when I think the are talking to me. I haven’t been back to that office since, even when told to make an appointment.
It is interesting how many of us had atrocious schooldays experiences. My primary school was excellent, but it was small and cared about pupils as individuals. I also had a best friend who I could lipread even silently, so copying what she did (not actually copying her work) got me a long way.
In fact highschool was a big shock to me because I was separated from my best friend, and had to tolerate horrid bitchy girls who would be two-faced. I realise now that I started to miss the point, which didn’t show up in my grades until years later.
My main problem is that I can lipread/hear at the cost of huge amounts of energy. I can and have blacked out from the concentration, and the balance/health problems that I havenow are directly linked to that. I know I have to stop before my body crashes or I’ll end up horribly ill always.
I have learned a lot about myself in terms of my limits compared to those of hearing or more able-bodied people than myself. My limits are mine alone, and I cannot compare myself to others because I am not others. It is more important to look after myself longer term, than to compete in something I c can’t win in the long term.
This is why I started learning sign language, and no longer use telephones for voice. Two of the best decisions I ever made.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:33 am
My main problem is that I can lipread/hear at the cost of huge amounts of energy. I can and have blacked out from the concentration
This is going to sound so bad: I am so glad you feel that way. It means I’m not alone. (Just substitute see/read) If I’m prepared to get a migraine I can see and read close enough to everyone else, but I can’t physically rely on that anymore. This is why I’ve reverted to actually using my books-on-tape again. They’re a pain in the ass (and booo-ring to boot I swear the voices they get for textbooks sound like they graduated from the Ben Stein school of oratory…) but they beat a chronic migraine.
I also had horrid school experiences. My 3rd grade teacher refused to read my file (which had all the info on my eyes in it) because she “wanted all her kids to have a fresh start for her year”. She put me in the back, forced me to write in pencil (and then bitched about my spelling and handwriting) and on and on, until I told my mom what was going on at the end of the first week… Heh… That was actually kinda funny. Don’t mess with the Redheaded mommy.
It wasn’t until I went to the Blind School for HS that I got the help I needed. Braille classes and cane training, and so on.
Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough. Thanks for helping me avoid final study for a lil while.
Take care, Athina.
May 4th, 2006 at 6:53 am
That’s one of the things that people never understood about me when I was in school. They thought that conversational lipreading (which I find ever so slightly tiring- sort of like walking for 5 miles) was the same as lipreading a teacher from 6+ feet away. (majorly tiring. Like running a marathon) And then being able to keep that up for 6-8 classes per day. (Like running 6-8 marathons in a row) every day, for 5 days per week.
And when I tried to explain it, it fell on deaf ears. (pun intended)
Those were some of the most frustrating years of my existence, and lead to enormous physical pain, and the actual inability to lipread in even conversational situations for a while after that. (My brain was so pooped out that unless I KNEW someone, I couldn’t make heads or tails of three words they’d say). Additionally, I started partaking in self destructive behavior to keep my mind off of the physical/emotional pain of it. And eventually dropped out rather than continue to cope with it, since it was destroying my health (both physical and mental).
May 5th, 2006 at 3:56 am
hear hear!! (yeah pun intended also)
Im with ye on this one, im experiencing it in college every day, thank god I only have one lecture a week and work primarily on my own in class, but in the canteen at lunch and the one lecture a week is insanely difficult and tiring and I come out literally needing time out!!
I remember when in primary school, I didnt realise my hearing difficulty at the time, ill never forget that the teachers thought I was falling behind in certain classes due to the lack of understanding on my part of the subjects, when infact I knew the subject insideout! except maths, I was just crap at that!!
So they put me into remedial english class, which I HATED!! I was in with kids that could hardly read and write, and I was flying through books and essays, then they quickly realised there was nothing wrong with my understanding at all, then my hearing difficulty reared its ugly head!
Another time in 4th class, I can still feel the embarrisment to this day! I was inside at lunchtime with 2 other friends in the class and our teacher was at her dest and called me, she asked me a question and the only work I understood in it was ‘form’ so I started rummaging in my desk looking for this form, and I could feel her staring at me, and the 2 girls looking on in confusion, I was getting very nervous and started saying ‘I dunno miss’
she kept asking about this form!!! untill she finally got up out of her desk and came down to me and asked again louder, ‘Where is your uni’form’!!!??
I could have died, It was horrible and I remember the 2 girl’s looks on their faces must have been thinking, ’shes so wierd’ but I just couldnt hear the question! and at that time I couldnt lipread that well, and then I learned quickly to compinsate for what my ears were lacking!!
The new aids are helping only a tiny bit, and only in certain circumstances, I still rely on lipreading in college, and even yesterday Dympna asked me something from across the print room, she had to say it about 5 times before I got it, and I hate when that happenes but I was tired and just find it more difficult then!
May 5th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Thanks for your insightful comments, Sara. Yes, sad childhood
experiences are more intense because a child’s heart is still soft
and fragile. These sad experiences leave wounds that would not heal.
I felt so alone until I found this site. This is my first time to
communicate my thoughts and feelings to people outside my family.
Natalya, Alli, it’s sad you also have other health problems aside
from not being able to hear well and see well. They say we will never run out
of problems in our lifetime. The only difference we can make is the
quality of spirit in which we face these problems.
Oh, lette, that’s really embarrassing, the ‘uniform’ incident.
It’s nice if we can recall our embarrassments and laugh about it.
Again, they say we grow up the moment we learn to laugh at ourselves.
LOL.
May 5th, 2006 at 10:20 am
yeh!! I guess
but….im still soft and fragile… :p hehehe kidding!! I am a big child tho, im not leaving go of that!! 
May 5th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Hi lette! You seem to be always in front of your pc.
We have to
grow up, mature, mellow but in our hearts we should remain forever
young, forever free.
May 5th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
well im forevr in front of it today as I get to abuse the broadband in work!! :p
dont be a stranger now 
thanks for dropping by my bloggy
And.. yeah Im never growing up
im a baby at 23 
May 5th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Alli: Makes perfect sense. Just because we ‘can’ doesn’t mean that we should. The migraine/blackout is our body telling us that we are abusing it and that we shouldn’t do it too often.
Audiobooks would piss me off, as you are stuck at the speed of the speaker *yawn*. Not to mention you can’t skip the boring bits because you don’t know what comes next. Good luck in your current batch of exams, thinking of you.
My mum once went on the rampage at one of my teachers when I was six. The teacher had decided that she didn’t like me flinching and turning around to look at whatever caused noises in the classroom. My schoolwork wasn’t affected, and I wasn’t disrupting other children, but I probably flinched very visibly because I couldn’t identify sounds properly (still can’t). So, this teacher told me to turn my hearing aids down/off - so I lied and said I would do so and pretended to flick the switch.
A few minutes later another loud noise happened (in an open plan school, and classroom of 6 yr olds), and of course I still flinched, making the teacher realise I hadn’t turned my aid off. So the teacher made me give her my hearing aid, and told me to get on with my work. I assume she gave it back to me at some point before the end of the day.
Now I never took my hearing aid off unless I was washing my hair, or having my hair brushed. I slept in it, with it on. I couldn’t communicate without it, I didn’t know how. On the few occasions it broke I could not sleep until I had a replacement or I crashed out from exhaustion. I was totally dependent upon the hearing aid, and extremely insecure, lost and scared without it. I knew that the teacher taking it away from me was wrong so I told my mum as soon as I got home.
My mum was very very angry, not with me, but with the teacher. She made it very clear to me that I was in the right, and that I had been badly wronged. She strode into school the next day and demanded to see the headteacher and the teacher who’d taken the hearing aid. She pointed out that they wouldn’t have taken my friend A’s glasses away (A was severely long sighted, wearing her glasses for PE unlike most kids with glasses). Some years later this teacher told a friend of my mum’s that she regretted this incident, having not realised the severity of her actions. This filtered back to my mum, who was pleased that the teacher had at some point understood what was so wrong.
Sara: Absolutely, very few people realise the difference between a ‘conversation’ between known people, and a ‘lecture’ from a possibly unknown person. It is auditory memory as much as actual understanding in the first place. If you are lipreading then that is brainpower which is not going to the memory of the words. Lectures are tiring at the best of times for hearing students, for us they are a nightmare.
I was lucky at school, most of my teachers were decent, and they rarely talked for more than 10-15 minutes at time. Even in a 1hr40min class they would never talk for more than 20 minutes at once without giving us worksheets or board work. College was much the same, with short bursts of talking then written/practical/other work. I also got a bit of relief by being ill, which may have been exacerbated by the stress I was under. I reckon if I hadn’t missed so much due to illness I’d have flipped out, especially at the physical education teachers *grrr*. As it was I was signed off PE and all non-exam subjects, it was the only way my doctor would permit me to attend school - as it was I did 4 more subjects than he wanted because they wouldn’t let me drop maths and physics.
University is when I really discovered my limits. Where I had three hours back-toback of lectures every day, with just some bloke (I find men much more difficult to hear/lipread/understand in general than women) whittering on about arcane chemistry concepts. In hindsight a notetaker and FM system would have helped, but the timetable was still insane. On Tuesdays I would have 3 hours of back-to-back lectures, followed by 6 hours of labs with no break between them - if we were lucky we got 30-60 mins between midday and 2 for food. On Fridays I had two hours of lectures followed by a maths lesson and two tutorials - the maths tutor was so incomprehensible (Yorkshire accent, mumble) that I took my hearing aid out and eventually stopped attending. I think we worked out I had 21 lecture/tutorial/lab hours a week in my first year of chemistry. In contrast repeating my first year as an information management student I had about 12.
At least I now know why I was blacking out. I never told doctors about it because I figured they would just think I was a hypochondriac. All my lecturers thought I was anorexic because I was thin - walking 90-120 mins a day on Sheffield hills makes you thin no matter what you eat!
These days I just don’t kill myself, if I start to get ill then I will turn off my hearing aids if I have to. One of the reasons I’m learning BSL is to get my sign good enough to follow a BSL interpretor for lectures and other such things. I’d like to do some postgrad/research stuff at some point. The Open University is brilliant because it is all distance learning. I’m doing some maths courses because I found myself unable to do 12 yr old highschool maths, which sucks because I know I’m not crap - just have no decent foundation.
Lette: Remedial English! Meep! My dyslexic friend got treated like that before her dyslexia was discovered. She could write okay, but her spelling was bizarre and to get into good English classes you had to be able to spell. The ironic thing is that she got diagnosed as dyslexic at 15, got some support classes and extra notes and stuff to learn to overcome it. She graduated from university with a 2:1 in English literature and Sociology - about as much writing as a degree can get. She reads more than I do.
The Uni’Form story made me laugh in recognition too. Kim was talking about marathons in the car earlier - I thought she was talking about Americans. Bloody hearing!
May 6th, 2006 at 9:20 am
..and my brothers were talking about a car named Celica but what I
heard was Angelica. Bloody, bloody hearing, too!
That’s why I told lette that teaching is a noble profession
specially if it’s teaching kids. A teacher is remembered well
not so much because of how good she was at teaching but because of
the kindness,understanding, and compassion she showed to her pupils.
May 8th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
uh huh
If I can do that to help people ill be a happy bunny 