What do I expect?

First I want to answer a comment in a main post since the commenter has asked twice now:

The commenter had asked: when I do get hearing aids will I cover them with my hair? Why?

I thought I answered that in a comment, but...

No I won't intentionally cover them. Why? Because I'm not fussed about being seen with hearing aids. Of course I have long hair and it may fall such that it lays on top of a HA but I'm not going to go out of my way to conseal any HA I eventually receive.

And now onto the 'meat' of the post...

In email correspondance the topic of [my] acceptance into the Deaf community came up.

I thought that it would be difficult for me to be accepted even appearing to be a late-deafened person because I didn't grow up Deaf. That is my main concern. Obviously I'll keep the fact that I wanted to become deaf quiet (no pun intended) since it isn't worth the hassle to be 'out'.

Will I eventually be accepted into the community? Probably. Is it a major concern? No, not really.

It would be nice to converse with Deaf people but at the same time I'd be happy to stay at home and be deaf here than go outside at all and show or tell the world. I'm a shy person and I don't socialise much in person (so it's kind of ironic that I would voluntarily make that process more difficult, eh?) but I'm happy with that; I'm happy with socialising on the net.

Acceptance into a community to which you belong is always nice but I have to be realistic: I didn't grow up Deaf and I will probably not be as fluent with BSL like the locals are. I'll always be a foreigner both literally and figuratively. It doesn't bother me since this is something that needs to be done irregardless of social impact (albeit I worry about Casey's reaction).