Feeling Trapped: My Experience with Hearing Loss

As a suggestion....start with iconic signs. Those would be more gesture like signs that represent an image. (Book = opening hands as if youre opening a book, milk= squeezing your hand into a fist, like you're milking a cow, etc)

I was born prematurely with facial nerve paralysis and ear deformations that caused my hearing loss. I was placed in a school for the hearing impaired where they taught PIDGIN SIGNED ENGLISH which is a cross between Signed Exact English (SEE) and ASL. So growing up I had hearing impaired friends but family doesnt sign, and as an adult I took ASL courses in college only to fail not fully understanding at the time that what I grew up learning wasn't ASL grammar (although I understood the signs, they were structured differently) and Even though in most situations I got by without accommodations, I still needed them so advocating for them became really difficult because nobody could understand that one on one, I could read lips.... In a classroom or meeting situation I couldn't ...and would need an interpreter. Finding employment was hard because I couldn't use headsets or phones like everyone else could. I couldn't hear timers go off, air conditioners, heaters, the buzz of fluorescent lights would be so loud that I couldn't focus on speech. Focusing on anything other than background noise became exhausting.

I am thinking of learning tactile sign for the deaf-blind

Wow! That’s hard! I totally get the in between feeling. I have degenerative hearing loss from a genetic condition, and I am also kind of in between. I would love to learn sign language, except my vision is also going, and i won’t be able to see the motions if my vision keeps this up

I also am very hard of hearing due to having two cholesteatoma's in my right ear. I have been dealing with hearing loss since 1st grade and I am now a sophomore in college. I'm too hard of hearing to be able to talk to anyone if there's a lot of background noise so making friends tends to be a struggle. However, I too feel like I hear too well to fit into the deaf community. I plan on trying to learn ASL soon to hopefully make me feel more welcomed into the deaf community.

I am hard of hearing myself. But what I would recommend is to start learning ASL at the moment so that by the time that your hearing is completely gone away, you have some form of communication. And also, in my experiences, sign language is a bit easier than the other languages. Highly recommend