This story goes back to my graduation days. I was enjoying my vacation at the house of my grandparents in their village, which is also a safe space for me. That is the time when all of a sudden I went through a very bad viral infection, which ultimately led to severe hearing loss in my left ear, sadly a permanent impairment.
Coping with this newly developed challenge was not an easy task. Especially when people around me just refused to acknowledge how serious it was. I could not hear anything when someone would call me from my left side. This even became a fun activity for many of my friends. Adjusting to this ailment took me a long time till I became capable enough to not let any new person around me know that I can not hear properly.
I decided to not reveal it to anyone anymore as everyone would think that I can hear just fine while the truth was that it was really a big unsolicited and unprecedented challenge. Besides that, I do not want every other person to look at me with sympathy. I thought that the only way people would treat me normally was to just ignore it and not talk about it at all.
Disabilities developed at a later stage in life demand a lot of mental strength. It gets worse when you’re stuck in a condition where you’re somewhere between being completely disabled and being a normal person. You’re somewhere in between “getting some additional support” for being disabled and “treated as completely normal” but actually not at any of those places. And it becomes an even bigger pain when you’re going through your student life days. I wish society would talk more about these “never-talked-about” issues.