I Rejected My Hearing Aids

I kept my hearing aids in my school desk. Never took them home.

Every morning I’d put them in. At lunch, I’d take them out. At recess, out. End of the school day, back in the desk. They lived there like school supplies, something that belonged to the building and not to me.

Part of it was practical. Early 90s hearing aids were sensitive to water. Sweat could damage them. The ear molds were uncomfortable. And in a loud cafeteria, they made everything worse, amplifying a hundred voices into a roar I couldn’t parse.

Part of it was social. I was bullied. Kids were not kind about the things that made me different, and hearing aids were visible proof that I was. Taking them out was one less thing to get targeted for.

But there was something deeper than comfort or social survival.

When you’ve never had perfect hearing, you have no comparison point. There’s no “before.” My hearing was my normal. The muffled version of the world I lived in didn’t feel muffled to me. It just felt like the world.

So the loss didn’t feel like a loss. And the solution didn’t feel like a solution.

I genuinely believed I didn’t need them. Not out of stubbornness or denial, but because I had no frame of reference for what I was missing. You can’t miss a sound you’ve never heard.

I wore hearing aids only during school hours, only when required, for years. From age six to eighteen, I rejected the thing that was designed to help me.

I wasn’t being difficult. I was being a kid who didn’t know what he couldn’t hear.

#LLHearingMyStory #HearingLoss