The first thing that left me was the voice of my son.

It was gone. His lips moved. Sound waves vibrated through the air only to find their destination was a pair of ears that no longer recognized them.

The second thing that left me was my own voice.

The sound I once knew as, well, me — the real me, not the computer-amplified me I hear through hearing aids — became a low vibration that rumbled in my throat. But in my ears, only silence. Someone had muted me and threw away the remote. What did my speaking voice sound like in real life? I no longer remember.

The third thing that left me was the flitting of book pages.

I’d relied on my Kindle for so long that when, after more than a year, I took a physical book to bed and turned the page—the page. The page. Wait. Page. Page. Page. PagePagePage. Didn’t that used to do something? Make a sound? Register to me in some way? Page. Page. Page. Silence.

And I think that’s the one that stunned me. Because it was sneaky. My son’s voice had been leaving me for years along with lots of other sounds. My own voice had gradually been drowning inside of me. But those pages? Those pages that got me through my whole life as I immersed myself in story after story? Well, they’d gone completely quiet with no warning.

Realizing I had lost them and needing comfort, I frantically reached to my nightstand to find and replace my hearing aids. Then I flitted those pages again and I let their song soothe me. Breathe. There it is. And there’s my voice. And there’s my son’s voice. The sounds are all still there. Even when I don’t hear them.

That’s the state of my existence today. I have been profoundly hearing-impaired since birth, but that’s something I’ve only come to terms with in my 40s. That’s something I’ve only truly reckoned with thanks to the pandemic.

It’s a hard thing for me to express my pre-COVID relationship with my disability because I’d never looked it in the eyes. I avoided doing so as much as I’ve always avoided being truly open about it, even to myself. I said I wasn’t ashamed of my hearing aids while constantly trying to hide them with my hair, constantly trying to pass as hearing, constantly trying to pretend I heard what you said.

Because I spent my life embarrassed to ask for things to be repeated, I have become such an expert at reading faces that I can hold a full conversation and react in the expected manner without truly comprehending anything that was said. It’s the most ridiculous superpower ever.

After college, I worked downtown in the marketing department for PNC. One coworker regularly chided me when I didn’t hear him — when he spoke to me with his back turned or in his usual mumble. It became borderline abusive.

“You can’t hear.” “Get your ears checked.” “God, are you deaf?” I laughed. I evaded. I excused. I pretended. I dreaded interacting with him. Why didn’t I just say, “I’m deaf?” Why didn’t I advocate for myself? Tell him the truth and ask him to face me when he spoke? To enunciate? Why did I choose shame? To this day, I don’t think he knows about my disability. That’s on me.

In a later role, I was the communications director at a nonprofit. Mr. Harris was on the board of directors and I needed to have a phone conversation with him on the very day both of my hearing aids broke. Were I less ashamed, I would have emailed him to let him know that perhaps we could have that call another day. But it was Franco Harris. So I put my office phone on speaker, maxed the volume, and stuck my ear up against the speaker like a medieval time traveler confronted for the first time with telecommunications.

I managed. It stressed me out to the point of nausea. But I managed. Maybe? Maybe I didn’t, and to this day Franco Harris thinks I’m an idiot.

I wish I had been stronger. Prouder. More badass. No. Instead I was just pretty damn weak. For decades.

I truly can’t think of a moment in my life from birth to my mid-thirties when I verbalized to a person, other than my now ex-husband, that I wore hearing aids. Not a date. Not a boss. Not a coworker. But I’d know the second a person would spy the molds in my ears or the aids tucked behind them. I’d see it in their eyes. Their surprise. I’d hear it in their voice. Their sudden enunciation. Their increased volume. And instead of recognizing that as an extension of their grace, the very thing I needed, I saw it as a manifestation of my shame. That’s on me.

And then came COVID.

I avoid crying and I’m good at avoiding it. It’s one of my more useful superpowers. I don’t watch sad movies or shows and I don’t read sad books and I avoid discussions that involve emotions and when I feel emotions, I kick them directly into the sun.

But with COVID, my attempts at passing as hearing no longer worked. Trying to understand a masked person was like trying to understand one speaking a foreign language. I avoided any conversation. I no longer volunteered because I’d have to interact with masked people. I’d find myself sitting in my car with tears dampening my mask, frustrated that I had become even less of a functioning human than I already was.

I remember one incident that left me sitting at an airport gate crying in my seat. Because I hadn’t been able to understand the cashier at Cinnabon. And I wouldn’t just tell her the truth so she could find a way to help me. That’s on me.

Finally, about six months into the pandemic, I had to take my daughter to a new dentist to get a troublesome tooth looked at. At the end of the visit, the dentist came out to the waiting area. Younger than me. In his thirties. Masked. And he began to tell me — well, I’m guessing he was telling me about her treatment plan and next steps, but I couldn’t decipher a single word. And then I did the unthinkable.

I held up a hand.

Wait. Just.

I don’t want to not hear this. I don’t have anyone to hear for me. It’s only me.

Wait.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to keep talking only for me to then tell you that I didn’t understand a thing you said to me. I’m mostly deaf. I read lips.”

Full stop. No excuses.

I felt the familiar shame and embarrassment swirling, but I had no choice. For my daughter, I needed to know what this man was saying to me. His eyes crinkled in what I assume was a smile and he said something—what? How the hell would I know? And then he walked away.

Okay then.

But he returned and handed me a notepad on which he had written, “Hi! I’m Dr. T_____.” And then he wrote out — with no shorthand — everything he had been about to verbalize to me.

I was as stunned as I was that day the pages died. It was the “Hi!” that got me. That cut right through.

Because inside that “Hi!” was the first time I recognized the grace. Not the shame or the embarrassment. The grace. I didn’t cry about it until that evening, moved as I was by the gesture that, to him, was probably a nothingburger in his long day of somethingburgers.

That one extension of kindness finally stomped down the shame. Not just writing the note, which itself was a huge deal for me, but taking the time to write “Hi!”? Man, that got me. That changed me.

That “Hi!” made me realize that I had been so focused on my own shame that I never bothered to give people a chance to show me their grace. To show me how they would alter themselves for me. To show me that they didn’t think I had anything to feel shameful about. I had denied others that chance my whole life. That’s on me.

So because of COVID, because of my daughter’s tooth, because of that dentist, I went from attempting to pass as hearing to not even letting a person get half a syllable out behind their mask before I hold up that hand.

Bup-bup-bup. Wait. Just.

And then I do wait. I wait to see what they will do. Some pull their masks down. Some write me notes. Some take me outside and chat mask-free in the open air. Some talk louder and, well, that doesn’t help. Turning up a telenovela doesn’t make you automatically understand Spanish, does it? Indecipherable, but louder. Nice try.

It has been two years since I found the grace of others and let go of the shame in myself. It has been two years of real freedom. It has been two years of giving people a chance to show me they understand that once I verbalize my disability, the onus falls on them to make our interactions work. I can’t make myself hear, but they can make themselves understood.

I don’t know the next sounds I will lose and, to be frank, there isn’t much left to lose. There are only a few tones I can still hear unaided. A few clings and clangs. Without my hearing aids, I’m in silence now. Sometimes that silence comforts; sometimes it frightens. But I’m comforted knowing the sounds are still there.

With my hearing aids, I’m doing pretty well. But I’m comforted knowing that should I need it, there is grace out there to make my going easier — but the only way I’ll find it is if I let go of the shame.

And that’s why I write this. For you. Whatever you’re hiding. Whatever card you’ve been dealt that you’ve written shame across that you keep tucked in a deep pocket. Whatever hurdle, disability, mental health struggle, disease. Whatever chaos is running under your still waters, there is freedom in letting the shame of it go, and there is grace to be found in others when we do.

It’s on me and you to give them a chance to show it to us.

If they do, onward we go. If they don’t?

Well, that’s on them.

Virginia Montanez is a Pittsburgh writer. She publishes on Substack at “Breathing Space,” where a version of this essay first appeared.

First Published: July 24, 2022, 4:00 a.m.