It's been over two months since I've last posted. Last time my efforts didn't pan out well with the cotton. It requires a LOT of cotton to get a good seal and it really does make the ear canal ache. Went without, alas.
The depressing thing is that the oiled cotton is good for a small loss but to get a large enough loss for me requires an unreasonable amount of cotton. Oh well. I'll continue with noise therapy to get to my goal.
So for me it's relatively easy to simulate deafness (or probably more aptly "hard of hearingness"). Just shove some oiled cotton in my ears and hope no one looks down my ear canal. Easy.
And with that in mind this coming weekend I shall land in a major North American city and do just that for the entire weekend. Nothing too exciting but I expect the trip will be scary and exciting and just what I need. Details afterwards, of course.
This post could not start without saying that a few weeks ago my partner, Casey, passed away. We were going through a divorce and things must have been hard for hir and so, we think, sie took hir life.
I'll be moving back to North America at the end of March (next week).
In February I had my audiogram. I wasn't terribly upset that I didn't fib (much) or get hearing aids because I was planning to leave the country at the end of March anyways because of the divorce and it would have taken too long on a wait list to get hearing aids. It's okay...
In any event I shall have to pay for my hearing aids, which I am fine with.
The audiogram wasn't what I'd like it to be, obviously, but I'm okay with that.
Lately, with Casey's death I've not been too adversely effected by my BIID - I've been off work for a few weeks so I can control sound for the most part. There's been far too much going on for it to have an effect on me.
(Oh, and to anyone who would like to comment: Please don't say "I'm sorry for your loss" - I've heard it a thousand times to date and it is now meaningless. Think of something else to say to express that you think it sucks that my spouse took hir life.)
In the BIID community there's a lack of terminology available to us. We tend to say "wannabe", "need", and "want" and "desire" and the other synonyms to describe how we are effected.
But they're not right and their other meanings too simplistic and convey an inappropriate meaning.
Every time I encounter someone and tell them about my...condition one of those words wants to come out; they're a copout. They're an easy exit without having to go down the long road of explaining what I feel, how I feel and how those feelings impact me and have me see deafness as a solution.
Using those words is just easier than going through the longwinded explanation (again and again) because in the end the person to whom we explain will just boil it down to those other words.
Whenever I use those four words imagine we had a long conversation in which I explained that the words aren't sufficient to describe what I feel and that they're just a close approximation.
I've been in my own little world. I was in Canada for three weeks over Christmas and New Years. I've told Casey that it's over and that I want a divorce.
Yeah... the 'D' word (no the other 'd' word). I've been trying to sort out what is going to happen to me after the fact and to make sure I still have a job after it's done. I haven't filed papers yet (doesn't matter when I do it cos Casey will not contest it) since I'm trying to get everything in order beforehand. To make matters more stressful I've got an audiogram coming up soon that I'm trying to "prepare" for.
On the BIID front: I've been meaning to make a post about the inadequacies of words like 'need' and 'want' and 'desire' with respect to those afflicted by BIID but my focus of late is entirely on dealing with the situation at hand.
Life for me is very stressful as of late. Life is very much "same shit different day"
It's been another long time since I've made a post. Life is progressing, albeit in an odd direction. There's no real update.
I still don't like sound and still seek deafness. My personal alarm has broken and I should buy another one for use. It sucks pulling it out of my purse, holding it up to my head, pulling the pin and having *NO* sound come out.
It has been ome itme now since my last post. I have the "power" but I haven't used it. I tell myself that it's because these alarms are designed to draw attention and when deafening myself the last thing I would want is curious eyes coming to the noise.
But I'm running out of time, really. My hearing test is coming up rapidly and I can still hear more than I want for the test. I must either deal with hearing, make some bloody effort or shut up. Yes, Sean, you're right: explanation isn't required to docs but others may be more persistant. It's something I'm trying to deal with.
