Trust in Faith

Imagine being made fun of by everyone, including your family, about the amount of times you use the phrase “Wait, what?” in a conversation because you need someone to repeat what they just said. 
 

If you have ever had a conversation with me, this was most likely a phrase that came out of my mouth more than a few times. And while there is a slight possibility I just wasn’t paying attention, it is more likely because I have a hearing loss that prevents me from hearing certain sounds such as ones that are too high pitched, too low pitched, or too quiet. So I wear hearing aids to help me better understand what people are saying to me.

This hearing loss is not something I developed due to a traumatic incident at a gun range or by going to too many Taylor Swift concerts. It is something I was born with. It is not something a large population of children are born with, however. In fact hearing loss occurs in only 5 out of every 1,000 newborns or .5% (Center for Hearing and Communication). That is not a large number even though over 4,000,000 babies are born in the United States each year. 

My impairment is something that has been a setback in regards to school. Even a mild hearing loss can cause a child to miss as much as 50% of classroom discussion. This disadvantage is something that would not fly for my parents so at 4 years old, I got my first pair of hearing aids. For those of you who have never been through the process of getting hearing aids, let me explain. The audiologists let you pick the color of your hearing aids so that you are more inclined to wear them and back in the day, they did not have the current, almost invisible, Thin Tube technology. Instead they gave me ear molds that covered the majority of my ears. Now let me tell you, I made a lot of questionable decisions when I was 4 but the color choice of my hearing aids is one that still haunts me to this day. 

The time that I regretted it most, however, was my first day of kindergarten when I walked through the school doors wearing my hot pink hearing aids like they were diamond earrings. From this moment on, everyday was filled with kids asking what I deemed to be stupid questions about my fashionable hearing aids to which I always responded with as much sass as possible. For example: 

“Doesn’t it hurt to have that in your ears?” Do I look like I’m in pain? 

“Why do you need them? I can hear and I don’t have them.” Yes, friend, I am well aware you can hear without them but I was born not being able to hear very well without them. 

And my personal favorite, “Wait, so are you, like, deaf?” If I were deaf, would I be talking to you right now? 

But it wasn’t only the nonsensical questions that seemed to make each day more and more challenging to get through, it was also the lovely nicknames people came up with for me such as “pig ears.” And the conversations people would have about how unattractive my face was right in front of me because they were convinced I couldn’t hear them.

Not all of the interest in my hearing aids was ill-willed though. There was also the case of my friend, Daiquisha, who just wanted to know what it was like wearing hearing aids and would steal them from me during nap-time and try to wear them.

Thankfully though, I made it through elementary school with only a few emotional scars and moved on to middle school, where instead of dealing with all of the tortures that came with wearing hearing aids, I simply refused to wear them. Surely this would solve all of my problems, right? You know except for the part where I couldn’t hear. But after about a year and a half of working twice as hard as everyone else to get the same grades because I missed most of what went on in class, I shifted from trying to avoid my problems to trying to blame them on someone else. Because let’s face it, blaming other people for your problems always makes you feel better. So I did some quick Googling to figure out if hearing loss was genetic since, obviously, this, along with all of my other life problems, was my parents’ fault. 

Unfortunately for my 7th grade ego though, it was quite the contrary since Google told me that over 90% of deaf or hearing impaired children are born to parents with normal hearing. It was at this point that I finally started to accept that my hearing loss was not something I could run from, blame someone else for, or fix. It is something that I need to learn to deal with to the best of my ability. It also coincidentally happened that around this time that some wonderful person invented thin tubes so my hearing aids were no longer blatantly apparent or pink. 

Nonetheless, people still notice my hearing aids occasionally and ask me silly questions. And people still make fun of me saying “wait, what?” every five seconds, especially my family who must get tired of repeating their stories a million times over. And I still miss things in class because even with hearing aids, my hearing isn’t perfect. But I have learned to answer the questions with more tenderness and less sass because after all, people are just curious.

I still say “wait what?” every five seconds because you can make fun of me all you want but I WILL figure out what you’re saying to me. And I have learned that it’s okay to ask a friend if I miss something a teacher says because I deserve to learn the same things as everyone else in the class. Having a hearing impairment and overcoming all of these adversities has made me stronger, but it still hurts when someone takes a jab at the way my hearing aids look or accuses me of being lazy, not paying attention, or being zoned out when the truth is that I literally could not hear what was happening. 

Of all of my experiences with hearing loss, I’ve been taught two major lessons. The first is that I want to be a pediatric audiologist when I graduate from college so that I can help kids who are going through the same things I went through at their age — and advise against hot pink ear molds. The second is that even if I am wearing hearing aids, or I look like a completely different person after I have major jaw surgery in June, or one day I lose my hearing completely, I am still Faith. I am still the same sassy little 5-year-old who didn’t understand people’s curiosity and picked out pink hearing aids for myself, and I will continue to be myself and grow as I go through my life and learn more and more about how to deal with the struggles I face every day.

Faith's family became involved with BEGINNINGS when she was a sophomore. She and her sister Maggie were ambassadors at 2014 Spring Gala. Faith will participate AG Bell's 2015 Leadership Opportunities for Teens (LOFT) program this summer.