There is nothing I dread more than the confused, shocked, horrified look on people’s faces after I open my mouth and say something incomprehensible to their untrained ears. I feel like I am exposed for the freak of nature that I am. Despite my years and years of preparation in the form of weekly speech therapy sessions and high-tech cochlear implant, I still clumsily navigate the hearing world, where sound reigns supreme, constantly tripping over tasks that seem mundane to most people.

My body, and more specifically, my ears and voice, are seen as something out of the ordinary and freakish that must be covered up as efficiently as possible or put somewhere else where there are “people like me”.

It is often difficult for me to articulate the intricacies of my deafness to hearing people, who are often not familiar with all the culture as well as all the technology surrounding deafness, so I just settle for saying, “I’m deaf, but I have a cochlear implant!” or “I’m just really hard of hearing!” in order to dispel any fears they may have about me not following their expectations. Rather than fully embracing the natural quality of my deafness, as I was born profoundly deaf (meaning less than 20% hearing), I hide behind the unnaturalness of having a cochlear implant, of spending thirteen years in speech therapy, of training myself to live in a hearing world.

This is not to say that there is actually anything wrong with those things – but it is strange that communicating through sound is seen as more “normal” and “natural” than communicating through signs or written word. It is also strange that having a deeply invasive surgery and getting a magnet implanted into your head is seen as necessary for deaf children to attain some measure of normality and communicate in a natural way, rather than simply using a sign language that can be learned easily, fluently, and yes, more naturally than spoken language. Deafness by itself is not unnatural, but it has become medicalized and treated by mainstream medical institutions as something that must be cured in some way.

Deaf People Can by Nancy O’Rourke (2012)

Although it is also not easy for me to unpack my feelings about my hearing, having a cochlear implant, and how it relates to my childhood/adolescence, I have essentially grown up in the space where deaf and hearing clash to create wild waves that threaten to wash me away if I do not hold steady. But sometimes I cannot hold steady. Sometimes I want to explode with frustration at the people around me and force them to question what they hold as “normal” and “natural.”

To me, it seems unnatural that someone would not look at me and make eye contact while one of us is speaking. To me, it seems unnatural that classrooms are not always set up such that everyone is able to easily see each other and the professor is well lit. To me, it seems unnatural that someone who has little facial expression would not be able to recognize why it is so difficult for me to understand them.

My point is not to say that being able to hear or not being able to hear is unnatural, and certainly not to claim that what is unnatural is always negative, undesired, or inferior. My point is that it is necessary to question the assumptions and perceptions that one has of the world around them, and recognize why we believe and assume the things that we do. I can embrace being “unnatural” and consider it natural for me.