Down the Tubes Productions

I have come up with a new phrase for people that leave a party often without acknowledging their departure – it is a close cousin to the infamous “Irish Exit”, though nowhere near my family’s lengthy, ridiculous, Italian goodbye which starts in the kitchen, goes to the living room, continues at the front door, concludes at the car window, and really wraps up with a phone call upon returning home. 

I am claiming copyright for “The H.I. exit” – the hearing impaired exit. It is marked by me, having had enough, bidding adieu with little to no apology and waltzing out the door. 

And I did it today for the first time in my life. 

I was in attendance at a monumental birthday celebration for a family member. The celebration was held in a large function room, beautifully decorated, with tables sprinkled throughout and Irish music playing from a large speaker. The space, though well appointed, was large and echoing. I could hear the music just enough to make conversation a bit of a challenge. I was also encountered with crosstalk, people eating and drinking while talking, and the dreaded polite but impossible for me to hear you action of putting the napkin in front of your mouth while you talk and chew. Add on top of all of this the excitement at seeing people I have not seen in a long time, with the sinking realization that their voices are unfamiliar to me. I was already exhausted, and the cake had not yet been sliced. 

I have always been upfront about my hearing loss, and have never shied away from asking for what I need to make an interaction successful. However, I have plowed my way through life just dealing with my hearing loss as though it were a pesky nuisance. Something to be dealt with superficially, with my drive fueled by reaching higher and higher runs of accomplishment to prove that I can do more with less when compared to those with typical hearing. As I have learned since Brad and I started our work together, dealing with it comes in many forms – and I have only dealt with it on a surface level. 

For the first time today, I dealt with it publicly in a way that I have never done before – I shared my frustrations about the noise levels, I asked people to move to my left side, I told people that I could not hear them over the music, I shared my levels of exhaustion from active listening, and verbalized that my social battery was draining rapidly because of the listening fatigue. I did not hold back, and did not censor myself about how I was feeling and what was challenging in that moment. I dropped all pretenses of trying to “fit in” with those with typical hearing in a social situation. For all of my life, I have accepted my exhaustion at parties as normal. I normalized the struggle of lipreading in dimly lit rooms and straining to hear conversations in a noisy environment. And I kept it all to myself because I viewed any admission of fatigue as a weakness. 

As I walked out of the event, I realized that it was an admission of strength.