Why Being Deaf Led Me to Realize That Having a Disability is a Superpower

By Pamela Gliatis

"Sorry, I'm hard of hearing, and I read lips": a statement that has been said millions of times throughout my lifetime. A statement that is complex and not black and white. The truth is, I am deaf, but only without wearing my cochlear implant. My implant allows me to hear better, which puts me in that gray area of hard of hearing. There is a gray area where anyone can range from mild to severe hearing loss, and hearing people often do not understand what that means. 

Ultimately, hearing people still couldn't understand even if it was explained to them what being deaf is like, because how could they? They do not know what it is like to navigate in a world that is either dead silent or chaotically loud all at once. They do not know what it is like to have to constantly rely on your eyes to read lips and body language all at the same time to understand what someone is saying. They do not know what it is like to have your mind run through a hundred possible words per second when reading lips to make out what someone is saying. 

At times there are feelings of shame that deaf people experience when they cannot understand someone, even if they ask people to repeat themselves several times until it gets to the point where they either finally get it or they don't. Or to feel so emotionally and physically drained halfway through the day after using all of their energy to communicate with others or simply to listen. These feelings lead to isolation and loneliness for many days and nights because deaf people need to not only protect themselves but also recharge. If people truly knew what it felt like, wouldn't people in our society have more grace and understanding toward people with disabilities? 

I grew up in a Greek-speaking household but couldn't learn Greek because I had to work on my speech and perfect my English. Learning another language would get in the way of me trying to pronounce my sounds—sounds that I couldn't hear. I was never going to perfect that; I would always have a speech impediment. When I was born, a series of medical complications led to doctors giving me antibiotics that caused my hearing loss. I then became a deaf child with hearing aids that provided roughly 20% of hearing. 

Being the first generation born in the United States meant I had parents who struggled with English. That also meant I spent a lot of time in isolation and silence because my parents and siblings spoke Greek in the household. They were working so hard to secure their financial freedom in this country that they didn't have the patience to translate for me. "You wouldn't understand," they'd tell me. My siblings would get so frustrated if they had to repeat themselves many times. All I wanted to do was talk, and I wouldn't stop. Sometimes I would throw random tantrums just to get someone to talk to me. But at the same time, I also kept to myself and withdrew often. I hated having to feel like I was a burden on my family.  

As an adult, I started using my voice more. I needed to be understood. There were many times I tried to express to my family how my lack of hearing led me to feel frustrated, depressed, and exhausted the older I got. My family understood in some ways, but not entirely. They would push me and tell me I needed to stop making excuses. They thought that giving tough love would make me try to be stronger and push myself even harder to overcome my obstacles. It didn't. 

The older I got, the more my hearing decreased, and I had to try even harder to overcome these obstacles. I didn’t know how to keep going sometimes, but seeing my parents overcome their own obstacles of coming to America and not knowing any English by making an incredible life for themselves gave me the strength to overcome mine. My father always used to tell me, "I didn't have the opportunities that you have, so imagine how much more you can do than what I did." I knew I had to lead by example to show others the same thing. 

One day, I finally decided to step out of my comfort zone and undergo surgery to get a cochlear implant. As a result of that surgery, my hearing went up to roughly 75%, and I could understand some words without having to lip-read. Finally, so many burdens and pressures were lifted off my shoulders. I was slowly coming out of my depression and exhaustion fog after the first year of adjusting to my implant, which was one of the most challenging years of my life. I had to retrain my brain how to communicate all over again as if I were a baby learning to hear sounds again. Yet, at the same time, I felt like I had finally found something that would help me do all the things I wanted to do without any weight slowing me down as it had in the past. 

But then something shifted in that process of going from hearing aids to a cochlear implant. Some people thought that it was a cure for my hearing loss. Others didn't know how much more I heard because they still demanded me to look at them nonstop to read their lips. I was still in that gray area. It's not a cure. It is a tool to help me hear better, but it is also a sound processor providing more hearing. 

Sound processors do not have the abilities of a normal ear, which provides natural sound; instead, they sound robotic. The processor picks up every sound in the background at high sound levels, and I must work twice as hard to listen to someone. While it can be tiring, this was still the better option than making up for barely any sound. It was still a medical miracle for me because all I ever wanted was to hear more. I already had all the tools to adapt and communicate, so having more sound made me twice as determined to do more. 

Back in college, in my advanced creative writing course, my professor encouraged me to go deeper and past my optimistic facade of "everything is wonderful." That facade was my way of surviving and showing the world that I am not that disabled. So, I sat down, dug deep, and wrote a powerful poem about deafness. 

I did not expect to see my professor's and fellow classmates' positive reactions when they read it. They had no idea what it was like, but at the same time, it started to make perfect sense. There were parts of the poem that expressed how silence can be so powerful yet so black and white. Or parts that described how I used my hands on the ground to listen for vibrations during times I couldn’t hear. It was the little details that made them think twice about what deaf people go through on a daily basis. They were also the ones who encouraged me to submit that poem for publication for the world to read. Within several days of submitting, an online publication called Scapegoat Review couldn't wait to snag that poem to be published. Another professor of mine was so inspired by me that she invited me to be a guest speaker in her communication course for several years to talk about my experiences of being deaf. It was in those moments that I realized how I could lead by example and show the world the power of having a disability. 

Throughout the years, I have heard countless times from people in my life that they often forget I am deaf and that they have to remind themselves to look at me when they’re speaking to me so that I can read their lips. They don’t forget for selfish reasons; they forget because of my strength and ability to be able to do everything I need to do. Now, with all of my experience and the way I trained myself to adapt to situations, I can “read” people’s minds because of how I learned to read facial expressions and body language. I can understand a whole conversation between two people from across the room because of how I learned to read lips. I can feel a lot of different sensations because of how I learned to feel sound through all of my senses. These are skills that spies have to learn through grueling training, but this is the kind of thing that comes naturally to those of us who truly have to adapt. That’s when I realized that I actually have superpowers that can help me accomplish things that not even non-disabled people can do unless they are forced to by extreme situations.

Ultimately, those of us with disabilities should have enough grace to understand that there isn't enough awareness around these issues. It is up to us to show kindness and spread knowledge. It is up to us to stand up and advocate for ourselves. It is up to us to use our inner strength and show the world what we can do to change people's minds around the stigmas of disabilities. We are different because we have these gifts of a disability. A disability teaches us our own strengths and abilities, but also non-disabled people to realize they can do so much more if we can do it. There may be days when it doesn’t feel like it, but having a disability is also a superpower.