MUSIC

My daughter has been spending several afternoons a week with my mother. What do I do with the free time? Listen to music at really high volumes. Not the Curious George soundtrack, which I actually adore. And not even Madonna's Immaculate Collection, which my daughter adores. I've been listening to Hole. To Pink Floyd's The Wall. I've been listening to REM. The music I listened to before I went deaf. I test myself to see how much of it I notice missing at a regular listening volume, and then I just blast it into my living room so I can see at what decibel level I can hear all those fabulous nuances I'd forgotten at some point were there. This is how the deaf girl entertains herself when she's all alone.

The real truth of the matter is that other than what I've lost in music, I am really quite comfortable with the whole deafness thing now. I think the shift occured this summer when I stopped saying, "I'm going deaf." I just, instead, started saying, "deaf." That was it for me. A simple act of acceptance in a word. If you're becoming something, you live in a state of anticipation and its consequent fear. But if you are something, then that's just a fact of being. I think that as long as I was, in my perception, "going deaf," I was hoping that something would somehow stop it. It became exhausting to check in on it, guaging how much hearing I'd lost overnight or something. I'm much happier being deaf than I was when I was losing my hearing. I now have energy to focus on other things. Like rocking out to track 10 of Celebrity Skin.

Comments

Bobby D. said…
this blog really makes me think, it is a very good read. thank you
8:21 PM
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