What’s another word for tired, pooped, exhausted, or weary? Because whatever that word is, that’s what I am today.
Today I can’t hear as well as I could yesterday. I can hear the birds just fine, but understanding speech or conversations is, temporarily, a lost art. Luckily, the only one around is the Hearing Husband and he’s not interested in any lengthy discussions, either.
It’s been a busy, exciting and creative few weeks that included launching a book, family events, and a stage performance about hearing loss. All great stuff, but involving the expenditure of a great deal of both mental and physical energy. The energy well is dry.
Only a few things have the power to drive my hearing and comprehension levels down through the floor: active stress or nerves, the presence of extreme background noise – although I consider almost any background noise extreme – and fatigue, whether mental or physical. This is common with hard of hearing people.
People with good natural hearing may not understand how much energy it takes for people like me to listen, hear and communicate. For us, it takes focus, commitment and energy – a lot of it – to put together all the moving bits of speech and conversations into something that makes sense. So, at times like these, conversations that require me to look people in the eye, speechread them, think about what they are saying (or not saying) and respond accordingly, are challenges that I don’t feel like rising to meet. I can be easily distracted and tune out, meaning that many of the other guy’s words go missing. Oh, sorry…did you just say something?
I’m not writing this to whine or complain – but simply to explain. This is how it is for people with hearing loss, sometimes. Sometimes it’s all just too much.
This fatigue and cognitive overload will drive us to the couch with a blankie and a book or iPad – and we’ll stay there until we’re ready to get up and cope – and that just might be tomorrow. We will cancel plans that involve any energy and real people. TV or Netflix people are acceptable; we can use the captions to reduce our cognitive load and we can press mute if the sound becomes too much. We can even hit pause, stop, or fall asleep.
It’s tough to adequately explain this to the hearing people in our lives. Maybe this short article will help. Bear with us, thank you, we love you.
(Ps: The energy well will be full again tomorrow!)
