Somewhat Silent

(Note: It’s Christmas season anyway so I’m posting my blog post here, and sending you merry wishes and happy new year greetings. Athina)
 

Hello dear Somewhat Silent friends and readers. I wrote this stuff a couple of months ago and it’s gathering cobwebs already so I decided to finally post it.:)

            There were episodes of silence in my life. When I say episodes of silence it means times when I don’t talk to God, when our line of communication is broken, when I do not pray, I am silent.

            Sometimes this silence will come to the point where I will be filled with hatred and rage. In my mind I will rage against my parents who did not move heaven and earth to have my deafness treated. In my mind I will tell them this deafness is the cause of all my life’s misfortunes. That this deafness made me believe I will amount to nothing. I want even arrogantly to tell the world I am capable of doing most anything except hear well. This deafness warped and dented my personality.

            My deeply caring family will try to counsel me out of my pain and anger. My heart’s response was always – you will never know my pain unless you’re deaf yourself.

Strangely I never vented my anger on God. I just kept silent. I’m so hurt I refuse to talk to Him or confront Him. Perhaps because from childhood I have known Him to be a good, loving and merciful God and it is impossible for such kind of God to make me deaf, or give me pain. I have a great respect for this God that I dare not question Him but I behaved in such a way that He will see how hurt I was.

            This silence stretched to many years until I woke up to the realization that God is not silent. In fact He’s trying to reach me, He’s talking to me. It is I who would not listen.

Thru a loving family who would not give up on me, thru times of self searching and reading the Bible and books about God I rediscovered the good God of my childhood. I learned divine truths that I need not question God about my disability.  He is the potter, I am the clay. There is pain and sickness because we live in a fallen world.

 God does not always give us answers to our questions but He gave us promises we can stand on. And most importantly, life is not about us but about God and His love for us while we still have a disability.

            Ted Turner, the US media mogul said that God is only for losers. Exactly! And also for us who have lost our hearing. Even if we can cope, even if we have access to the best medical practitioners and the latest in technology, even if we have a supportive family, we still need God. Because again life is about Him and His love for us while we still have a disability. This only means even if God will not miraculously unstop our ears in our lifetime there is still a life out yonder when our healing will be complete. God is good and His mercies never end.

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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Hello everyone. I want to say once more that I am profusely happy I found this site. It felt like finding my kith and kin. I am from the Philippines where English is just a second language so you will have to check my peculiar English from time to time. I began losing my hearing when I was five years old. I can still remember the first time I heard ringing in my ears. It was a summer afternoon and I was gathering tamarind fruits that fell to the ground. I told my mother about the ringing sound but she didn’t understand what I was talking about. Of course we know it is tinnitus a sign of hearing loss. I have ambivalent feelings about my disability. Most of the time I’m depressed. I just console myself with the fact that I belong to a group which modern science and medicine call special person. I am young once and was a former teacher like prof.