How to be deaf

Part 2: Internalized audism

I didn’t realize how much I lipread until the pandemic, when masks created an eerie world where I could no longer understand what anyone said. With mouths covered, my level of deafness became clear. Before this, I wasn’t really aware that I am profoundly deaf in some speech frequencies, or that I would be generally characterized as “severely deaf.”

Deciphering speech is a constant fill in the blank where I use rhythm, context clues and mouth shapes to piece together what is said. Unconsciously, I use my short term memory to replay the sounds I hear until I fill in the blanks.