I Listen But I Can't Hear

I am going to share about why sign language has become so important for me personally.

A little bit about me for those of you that don’t know, I grew up as the only deaf person I knew.
My family were never given any resources about sign languages or about deaf culture when they found out I had a hearing loss.
The only things they were suggested was that I get hearing aids, and to go to speech therapy.

The first time I had my hearing aids on was a huge pain as there were lots of sound that I had to learn to identify. For example I had no idea I could hear the sound of water until I had my hearing aids on, that made me feel like a cyborg. That's another long story for another time as I would like to focus more on sign language for this article.

Only when I moved to Belgium, specifically the city Antwerp, was when I slowly realised there was a big deaf awareness movement here as there are more than half a million people who are deaf in belgium and being inclusive is an important topic that is discussed often.

Now, I’m Deaf, but I speak, I lip read and to a lot of hearing people they often see this as me being a normal person.

Though if you think about it, normal for who?

When hearing people listen to me talk, if they speak English, they can understand me 100%.
I speak their language, they don’t need to lip read or wear hearing aids, they can understand me.

But what about when it comes to me understanding them?

Every time I have a conversation with somebody, with my hearing aids on, depending on the environment and how deaf aware the person I am communicating with, I can understand about 90% if you were to make eye contact with me and speak clearly on a comfortable volume without covering your mouth.

Without my hearing aids, I am only catching about 15% of what is actually being said by lip reading.
And I'm a pretty good lip reader. Also do be aware that there are no lip reader that can lip read 100% of an entire conversation.
That is just some ridiculous spy myth that's been going around for years.

So when it comes to figuring out the rest of the conversation, that is done by the guess work, by the filling in the blanks, by the puzzle solving. Basically me trying to figure out what is being discussed by putting bits and pieces together from the information I received through lip reading, through the context, through somebody's body language, through facial expressions. It’s a lot of work.
And I am exhausted.

However, when it comes to me understanding a conversation 100%? That is like finding money growing on trees in your neighbourhood.
No matter how hard I listen and concentrate, I can't hear you 100%.
That just rarely happens.

Even though I speak 7 languages and enjoy learning and speaking different languages, in some ways, spoken language has been a stressful language for me. 

It’s a language that I can speak, but a language I can’t fully understand when it's spoken back to me.

However, sign language, Vlaams Gebaren Taal to be specific, is the first sign language I learned since I moved to Belgium even though Dutch/ Flemish is not my native language, it's a language that I feel like I should have had the opportunity to learn earlier in life.

I was only recently exposed to a community of deaf people who speak VGT (Vlaams Gebaren Taal) and what a relief it was to be able to understand each other fully without relying on the pain my hearing aid sometimes gives me, when I need to turn up the volume to understand certain hearing people who mumble, or being in a noisy environment where there are too many distractions for my hearing aid to pick up your voice to fully understand you.

I became more aware of how much accessibility I have been missing out on simply because I didn’t learn sign language growing up.

If I had the opportunity to learn sign language growing up, I would have been able to have full 100% conversations with people without having the need to pretend to hear everything out of shame of being viewed dumb.
I was ashamed of myself and finally now at the age of 34, I am starting to embrace who I am and feel proud communicating in sign language without fear of people viewing me as dense.

Sign languages have been around for so long, it's beautiful to see that it's finally gained more awareness, to bridge a gap between the deaf and the hearing people, to form new friendships and relationships.

To include everyone no matter your culture.