Do You Ever Take Those Off?
As I write this I am wearing headphones (over-ear, heavy duty, like the ones you would find in your school computer labs) and they are digging into the thin skin behind my ears, forming a small dent in my scalp. I don't think I have taken off my headphones without necessity this year. I take them off to monosyllabically grunt at a family member or to check if my dog needs to go outside and stare at some birds much bigger than her; there have been some panicked moments of me grabbing the sides of my head in the shower hoping that I’ve not short circuited my one saving grace.
If you are asking why I’ve all but super glued these chunks of plastic wire to my head, here’s your answer. I'm anxious, autisic, and have hearing loss.
A perfect storm.
I have a unique ability to fear both loud noise and true silence. Headphones ebb away at the boulder of fear which resides with my stomach, however they present a separate set of issues. I’m sure many of you know how hard it is to try and run home in the rain, mud streaking up your school tights, attempting to keep your bag dry enough not to soak your heavy textbooks, it’s a nightmare. Add a new level of trying to curse the sky as the only thing keeping you mentally present on this earth slips off your head and tumbles to the puddle-stricken pavement.
At this point I have nearly 100 playlists and 50 podcasts that I listen to on Spotify, I don’t think I have had a screen time that is under 9 hours for 2 years.
Sometimes a few awkward fingers brush my neck and shoulder and a very polite, “Excuse me could you turn down the volume,” can be heard over the drum solo currently shaking my brain around my skull. The problem is I can't hear you. I can’t do it. My ears are like swimming pools: everything is slightly distorted, even my parents’ disapproving gaze as I shovel in dinner - headphones still on.
Every time I write about myself from my point of view I agonize over how pretentious I sound, like a grown-up version of those kids in romcoms, precocious and only charming for a few minutes. Every time I speak I have to think about the words I push past my teeth, I practice my sarcastic comments in the mirror so they sound natural, and when I used to pull on my school uniform I would remember to harden the ends of my words, turn my “ee” sounds into “ehs.” I like to roll my eyes and think its cliche whenever someone, normally a man with hipster glasses, a freshly permed “natural” mullet, and sticker tattoos says that “live music changed his life” but sometimes I like to live in cliche, push the angry wannabe punk eldest daughter out of my brain and conform to the cog mentality of indie cool girl culture, maybe I’ll try to buy an overpriced craft beer. I’ve been to very few concerts, the curse of inaccessibility not disability - inaccessibility: but the feeling of being right by the hodgepodge pile of speakers might be the closest thing to a religious awakening I’ve experienced. I apologize to my middle school religious studies teacher for the melodrama, but underlining bible verses will never compare to the reverb of a bass guitar pooling like sweat at the base of your neck.
The speakers aren’t a wall of sound but a body, a body of harsh beats nipping at your neck, a body of lyrics settling at that point where your jaw meets your ear. I like live music enough to brave the London tube for it, that's as close to an emotional love confession in the rain as I will get.
People (non-disabled people) like to say disability is a superpower because it makes them feel better, it takes away some of that pitying guilt that seems to live in their bones, its a useless pandering statement, people more eloquent than me have explained this better than I ever will, so as a testament to who I was raised by (The Jackass movies and TOWIE) I will just say it’s a fucking shit thing to say. However I think my hearing loss can sometimes be a superpower, more an anti-superpower, more “The Boys'' than “Marvel.” Who else can say that they can drown without water?
Without headphones or speakers, I feel weightless, untethered. There is no direct sound settling within me. Everything is slightly whispery, the slamming of a door, muted and dull. I’m scared that I am feeding into the poor disabled narrative that my life is perpetually in grayscale when I can’t hear, it’s hard to reconcile my pride at being disabled with the reality of how many walls I punched like a teenage boy losing a video game because I can’t express how loud and how quiet everything is at the exact same time.
My headphones are perpetually stained with hair grease from depressive episodes, finger smudges from late-night binges, and scratches from them being thrown to the floor wherever I want to pretend that I live in a soap opera, but they are mine. It’s a testament to the strength of my feelings or my lack of emotional maturity that these headphones almost feel like a person of their own. Their wires are more like sinew, their music not sound but almost a wet blanket, putting a damper on my overloaded body.
These aren’t my first pair of headphones- far from it. I store my old broken pairs in a box in my room, a sick serial killer's trophy box or a pit of nostalgia, depending on the state of my nauseating self-pity.
I like to look through them, remembering what music I would turn up too loud for the hearing people in my family. When I was 11 it was Green Day, When I was 14 it was Fiona Apple, right now it's a close tie between Eliott Smith and Napalm Death. What can I say? I’m multifaceted.
I don't think I can contextualize and describe my anger at the fact that I - a sometimes nonverbal, hard-of-hearing person- do not know sign language. I was never taught it, I don’t know my own language, and I don’t know the way to express myself. Angry tears burn my cheeks when I delve into the reasons why I don't know it, my mouth becomes too small for my body and my limbs become almost flaccid swaying uselessly at my side when I think about my lack of community.
But I can still connect somehow. I lie on the floor, headphones off. Speaker full volume. The sound vibrations travel up through tiles, past my slightly dry skin, and into my blood. I can't hear it but I can feel it. That’s not the loss people want to paint it as.
That's a gain.