Mood still up and down

It’s still the story of my life that I wear my mask. I often think it would scare the heck out of friends and family if they could live in my head for a week. One minute I can be fine and coping, the next I will have horrendous thoughts of death and how much better this world would be without me. No doubt there could be many people who would consider this as selfish, self-centred and a pity party but if they have never suffered with long term depression they don’t have a clue.

I grew up within a family where there was no reason to be depressed and there ‘are people out there with real problems’. Well yes I do agree with that but depression can hit anybody at any time no matter how good their life is. I grew up feeling very lonely at times despite having a family that loved me and had friends. All I can put it down to is initially having undiagnosed deafness in my right ear therefore not hearing anybody properly. Once it was diagnosed help was put in place which included speech therapy as I wasn’t talking properly. However, social events such as birthdays, going out for meals and going to discos / nightclubs have been difficult due to the noise. It’s impossible to explain to someone who has hearing in both ears how much I have to concentrate on one conversation. A favourite stupid question I’ve been asked over the years is “What’s it like being deaf in one ear?”

I’ve never known what it’s like to hear with both ears so how should I know?

My response has always been “What’s it like to hear with both ears?”

It makes people think and I appreciate it when I have conversations with people who lose hearing in one or both ears as they ‘get it’.

Having gone through a traumatic experience when I was 19 I wish I could just get over it but I can never can as I can’t wipe it out of my life. Being expected to get on with my life, never talking about it made life intolerable for me and changed my life forever as it destroyed my future life. It’s only recent years that I’ve been able to talk to my sister and she has been told of a couple of hurtful incidents. She had no knowledge of these two (been more) but that’s not her fault that nobody told her before.