While I did enjoy my weekend very much I was very excited to get back into the swing of things. I wanted to move on to being deaf so that I could start another life changing experience. I said goodbye to my lovely girlfriend and walked happily towards the science center to begin testing so that we may begin the deprivation. As soon as I got there and there was no one to be found… I worried.
I called Ben to make sure that he was okay. Instead of getting a huffy and puff answer of someone running… I got the “Mhhmmm…. What?” Otherwise known as the typical I just woke up statement. So for thirty minutes I waited for Ben to get to the lab so that we could begin and I just hung out.
I went around the hallways that I had traveled all last week, examining the things that I tripped over and used to guide myself. I talked to teachers and student alike that usually run the halls of the psychology department. I even sat on the couch I often sat at to cool off and watch the day go by.
Finally Ben showed up and we began baseline testing. Everything turned out great and we decided that it was sufficient to continue the deprivation.
I was stoked.
Until I had to put in those freaking ear plugs.
Whoever thought that something could be so uncomfortable almost instantaneously? It wasn’t like a few minutes and they were hurting, more of like a few seconds. I knew I wasn’t going to like them but I told myself to deal with it later. I sucked it up, put them in, and then threw on the headphones.
No this is where everything hasn’t gone quite as planned. Instead of complete deafness (I.E., I couldn’t hear human speech) it simply became super muffled. I found out that I can’t really tell what people are saying from a few feet away from me, I catch bits and pieces, but I can tell if someone is next to me and talking just at regular talking level or just above. But if someone speaks softly I can’t catch what they are saying most of the time.
So we have made the executive decision to instead of calling this a deaf study we will call it a hearing impaired study. We will see if impaired hearing, which at this hearing I would need a hearing aide, affects physiological senses at all. In all honesty, I don’t see it affecting it very much; at least not enough to make it statistically significant.
We left for lunch after I put them on and saw how people would react. Most people think that I’m walking around with headphones on, bebopping to a new jam on my fancy headphones. Little do they know is that I WISH I was doing that. Instead, I have to listen to the sound of my footsteps reverberating all the way up my leg to my jaw and making this eerie sound in my head.
That and the ringing.
Oh god the ringing.
I thought that you had to have to sound inputting in order to get that ringing in your ears you have when its really quiet.
Nope.
Instead, you only have to impair your hearing. Trust me on this one. I just try to ignore it and hope by tomorrow I have become habituated to it and won’t really have to deal with it anymore. I really don’t want to get a headache from it.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this but I also decided that it would be best if I tried to go mute also. I’m doing my best not to speak. But then again, you never really realize how much you talk to yourself until you try to stop all verbal communication whatsoever. Instead of the mindset of hating not being able to talk, I get into this mindset of, I didn’t realize I talked so much. I have to catch myself now and again but I’ve dramatically scaled down on the amount that I talk to myself. I’m sure by sometime later I will have perfected it and not talk to myself anymore.
So lunch people try to ask me what I’m doing and I do my best to pantomime what I’m trying to say. I look ridiculous and crazy all at the same time. Imagine me, sitting in the lunch room, giant headphones on, looking a little disorientated while I try to pantomime that I went blind last week and now am trying to be deaf. I thought that it was a funny sight in hindsight.
We ate and left to go chill out in the room. This was much more entertaining, while not quite as interesting, as being blind. I could tell what was going on but it wasn’t as funny. It’s hard to make jokes when you have no means to communicate. It’s hard to tell what people are talking about when they looked concerned. It’s extremely difficult to be told that the announcer on the game that you’re playing is talking and the game neglectfully forgot to put in a subtitles option.
Sometimes I hate video games.
But besides that I knew that I had to learn at least some sign. Something to communicate with. I knew if I did that then I would be less and less tempted to speak externally and would have some outlet of communication. I sought this to be one of my goals.
The day went by fairly fast. Nothing too stunning in particular. I did get to go to bass lessons that night. It was just as interesting as last week. Instead of really hearing the bass I could feel the vibrations of the bass rippling against my shirt and jaw. I learned how to play like this after a few minutes of warming up and Tim and I got started. Somehow we joked. We played. We enjoyed. I’m not quite sure how. It was just the natural connection that you feel with a person one on one. It’s easy to make even without the language barrier.
I learned a few new songs, most I’ve learned in a while, some complex licks, and I got some new stuff written. It was really good to have this the first day. More comforting that way. I felt as though that I could do something that I have always been able to do. Not limited by my disability, though I can’t say that if I was playing acoustic guitar it would be the same. I just really enjoyed having that comfort, basically because my comfort was stripped away on my last day of being blind.
So I came back for more hanging out, trying to get used to things and not really worrying about anything. And that’s still where I am now. I enjoy being able to pick up my bass without having to hit 3 different walls, knock down 2 pictures, and hit Zach in the head multiple times.
But we’ll see how this goes. I know that I need some way to communicate so I guess that will be the next thing that I work on. For now I’m going to take these darn earplugs out of my ear and hit the hay. Don’t worry, I’m keeping the headphones on. It is just painful to have the earplugs in for a long period of time and I don’t want an ear infection.
That and I want the vampires in my ears to escape at night.
Sleep easy!
I miss her voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment