A Deaf Girl Living In A Hearing World - Chapter One.

I was four years old when my ears popped and never quite popped back.

It happened somewhere over the ocean on the way to Tenerife. I remember pressing my face against the small, oval airplane window, watching the clouds drift and them looking like candy floss. My mum was beside me, flipping through the OK magazine, and I could hear the low hum of the engines, steady and comforting, like the purr of a cat. Until suddenly, I couldn’t.

My ears popped, just like they always did during take-off and landing. Only this time, the pop didn’t bring relief, and it hurt so bad! it was like someone stuffed cotton wool deep inside my head. The world muffled itself. I swallowed, yawned, tried pinching my nose and blowing, but nothing worked. I tugged at my mum’s sleeve, my fingers small and urgent.

“My ears won’t pop back,” I told her. But the words felt strange as I said them, as if they were trapped somewhere between my mouth and my own ears.

Mum smiled and said, “They’ll clear up soon, sweetie. Just suck on this polo” She handed me one, but it still didn’t help. I stared at her lips, watching them move, but her voice came through like it was underwater.

That’s the thing no one tells you about losing your hearing slowly, it doesn’t happen with drama or warning. There’s no switch flipping off. It’s more like a dimmer light, gradually turning down while everyone else in the room keeps reading by the same lamp, unaware that for you, the page is going dark.

For months after that flight, my ears remained stubborn. Some days, I could hear better than others, like a radio that couldn’t hold a clear signal. Doctors said it was fluid in my ears and my eustachian tubes were not draining properly. They said it would clear up. But it didn’t. I then had on and off infections that were treated by ear drops every time.

By the time I turned five, I started noticing the gaps because everyone around me mouths kept moving after their words faded out, the way laughter would ripple through a room while I sat still, waiting to catch up. I’d ask, “What did they say?” more times than anyone had patience for. Sometimes people would repeat, but often, they’d just say, “It’s not important.” I learned to stop asking.

Primary school was a blur of noise I couldn’t catch. I became an expert at pretending, laughing when others laughed, nodding when teachers spoke, even when I had no idea what was being said. The teachers called me “quiet,” as if it were a personality trait rather than a survival tactic.

The thing about gradual hearing loss is that nobody notices it at first, not even you. You think people are mumbling. You think the TV is set too low. You think maybe you’re just not paying attention enough. It’s easy to blame yourself before it ever occurs to you that the world might be slipping away. My dad for years would say “you’re not deaf, you just have selective hearing” like I could choose what I could hear or not hear.

It wasn’t until the end of primary that someone finally said the word: deaf.

Doctors sent me for a hearing test finally and the Audiologist frowned when I didn’t press the button for the beeps. “Are you feeling okay today?” she asked. I nodded. She tried again. Still nothing. Her eyes softened, and her tone changed. She knelt so we were face to face, I still remember this clear as day.

“I think your ears may need a little help,” she said gently.

That was the first time it clicked, this wasn’t something that would just “pop” back. This was real. My parents and siblings didn’t want to believe it, not for years we kept getting second opinions and more tests, even tried operations like gromets and adenoids but every single time it came up with the same answer, hearing impaired.

I didn’t know then that my hearing loss would get so bad that my world would grow quieter with each passing year, that soon voices would become blurs, and later, even those blurs would fade. All I knew was that a part of me was drifting, and I had no idea how to pull it back.

But in that uncertainty, there was also something else. A stubbornness. If the world was going to change on me, I would learn how to change with it. I didn’t have the words for it yet, but deep down, I already knew hearing was just one way to listen.