super bass headphones, empty sonic cups and a sleeping dog

Well I'm sitting here reminiscing on my night. Just got myself a strawberry limeade from sonic and listening to some music on iTunes through my headphones. I'm sitting next to the dog which is sleeping so that explains the title of my blog. It was a "OK" night for me. I got out of the apt for a while.

Being new in Johnson City isn't an easy process for me, especially as a deaf person. My motivation for coming to JC was to start over somewhere else since I wasn't making it back in Youngstown(the area where I'm from). I've been given a great opportunity to go back to school to earn my master's degree and I am not taking that for granted. But with all these opportunities come a price. There's more communication barriers that I need to over come. In Youngstown, I had 24 years of breaking communication barriers around my community and I still had to compromise most of what other hearing people take for granted. No matter how much pride I had in being able to "speak" and lipread in terms that I'm able to communicate as well as a regular hearing person in certain situations, I had to push that pride aside when a person didn't understand my voice and bring out a paper and pen which is my last resort of communicating. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with communicating through pen and paper though, it's better than not being able to communicate at all so I'll take it.

tonight, I went out with my sister to some of her track friend's apt to watch a football game. There were a bunch of people from the track team that I wasn't familiar at all with and they had never met me before this semester. Its great to meet people that are genuinely interested in learning more about deafness and sign language as was the case tonight. I got to tell a little about myself with the help of my sister to this group. I am happy to educate anyone about deafness and sign language, people tend to think that they're being stupid by asking me these questions like "were you born deaf?" or "how much can you hear?" These kinds of things are things I'm glad to tell about. So we talked for a few minutes about sign language. I was asked if I could sign in Spanish, and I replied with a prompt "no." The conversation continued for a little while and then it changed to another subject so I quickly became a wallflower again. I'm not bitter about it, I'm just used to it. 24 years of being deaf in the hearing culture will do that to you. There are hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands of identical situations that I've experienced.

Standing back and letting the other people talk while you just sit patiently trying to keep yourself entertained isn't hard to do. Today I had the UT and Florida game to keep myself entertained while the conversation continued so I was fine with that. But in other situations where there's nothing else going on beyond the conversation I usually have to use my sidekick or laptop if I have it to keep myself busy. But then the game ended so it was time for me to go home. I had met a few new people that are pretty cool and as a result I'm going to church with some of them tomorrow morning.

My goal for tonight's blog was not to tell you about my night but to tell you what I experience socially and have always experienced socially when I go out with my hearing friends. Don't consider this as an injustice but consider it as part of my life that I've come to accept. I'm not the only one that goes through this, there are plenty of deaf people out there that experience this, they might be more outgoing so they probably get themselves involved more into the conversation or less outgoing and stay home and avoid the situation. Me? As I've told you I get involved when the conversation involves me.

In a perfect world, everyone would be able to understand each other and adapt to each other's differences. Sure it'd be nice if everyone knew sign language so that I would be more involved with the hearing culture and have it be less of a disadvantage for me. Jobs would be so much easier to come by for me. My struggles in finding employment in Johnson City will probably continue for a few more weeks accentuated by the fact that managers usually hate being in a situation where they have to deal with potential deaf employees no matter how talented they are. Stereotyping is limiting me professionally and that is a fact.

When I've come to the end of my life, one thing I'd like to accomplish by that time is changing that stereotype as much as possible so that everyone gets a chance no matter what their communication disadvantage is or their physical limitations. One thing is for sure, I'm trying my best here in Johnson City and I hope that I'll make a difference here before I leave this city.