Maybe now people will understand why I turn down invitations to meet up, get a job, travel, or simply be with humans. 馃槀 It isn't because I suddenly stopped caring about people. It isn't because I really hate company, and it certainly isn't because I think I'm too good for anyone.
I'm just tired.
I've been semi-deaf for as long as I can remember, so I learned very early not to depend on my ears alone. When someone talks to me, I don't always catch every word. Sometimes the sound is muffled, incomplete, or swallowed by whatever noise is happening around me, so my brain automatically fills in the gaps using context, facial expressions, tone, body language, and whatever I already know about the person.
Basically, I reconstruct what I missed.
If I hear, "Can you... tomorrow?" my brain doesn't simply stop at, "I didn't hear that." It starts figuring out what would make sense in the conversation. What were we talking about? What could they possibly have said? What did their expression suggest? What did I catch before the rest disappeared?
I've gotten surprisingly good at it. Or at least, I thought I had. 馃槀
Sometimes people probably think I heard everything perfectly when, in reality, I caught only part of the sentence and my brain supplied the rest. I'm not necessarily hearing more than other people. I've just become very good at understanding from incomplete information.
The funny thing is that when you've been doing something for most of your life, people eventually stop noticing that you're doing it at all.
They see me functioning normally and assume everything is normal underneath. They don't necessarily see the extra work: listening harder, watching closely, piecing things together, guessing, checking, remembering context, and trying not to miss something important.
What looks like an ordinary conversation from the outside can sometimes be a surprisingly complicated mental exercise on my end.
And being good at compensating doesn't mean it isn't exhausting.
**That's one reason I don't particularly enjoy trips.
**
Unfamiliar places mean unfamiliar voices, noisy surroundings, announcements I might not catch, people talking while facing away from me, and conversations where I don't have enough context to fill in the gaps. At home or somewhere familiar, I already know the environment, the people, their mannerisms, their usual expressions, and often what they're likely to say.
Somewhere unfamiliar, I lose a lot of those clues. My brain has to stay switched on the entire time. What other people experience as a simple conversation can sometimes feel like work to me.
That's also why I love subtitles.
Give me something on a screen with subtitles, and suddenly I don't have to work so hard. The words are right there. I can read them, take my time, reread them, and actually absorb what I'm watching instead of reconstructing every sentence from fragments of sound.
It's not that I can't understand without subtitles. I've spent my whole life doing exactly that. I'm just tired of having to. There is a huge difference between being capable of something and having to constantly spend energy doing it.
And lately, I've experienced something I didn't realize I needed so badly: being able to simply relax. One of the things I find strangely comforting about being with my cousin is that she can call me bingi, and I can actually pretend to be offended, laugh about it, or throw some nonsense back at her. 馃槀
There's something liberating about not having to pretend I heard everything or prove that I understood. I can hear what I can hear, miss what I miss, and just be there. Nobody is asking me to perform perfect hearing. Nobody is making me feel like I have to compensate every second.
And now that I've tasted that kind of ease, I don't really want to keep putting myself into situations that leave me completely drained just because I've already proven that I can survive them.
That's the part I wish people understood. I'm not tired because I'm incapable of functioning. I've functioned. I've taught. I've stood in front of pupils and parents while constantly having to make sure I didn't misunderstand something and embarrass myself. I've learned how to adapt. I've learned how to compensate.
I've learned how to figure things out even when I didn't have all the information. But functioning has required extra effort from me for most of my life, and eventually you get tired of constantly proving that you can do something that was never easy for you in the first place.
So these days, I'd rather write. I'd rather sit somewhere quiet and write a novel. I'd rather put my thoughts into a devotional. I'd rather create something and let people encounter my words at their own pace.
Writing gives me something that spoken conversations often can't: control.
The words are there. I can think. I can reread. I can change something if I realize I didn't express it properly. I can say exactly what I mean without spending half my energy trying to keep up with something that disappears the moment it is spoken. I don't have to reconstruct my own thoughts while simultaneously trying to reconstruct somebody else's words.
***So perhaps I'm not choosing isolation. I'm choosing a different kind of connection.
I can still reach people. I can still make them laugh. I can still tell stories. I can still talk about God, life, absurdity, grief, hope, and all the strange things I notice.
I just don't always want to do it sitting across a table trying to hear over everyone's voices. I'd rather put the words on a screen. I'd rather whistle while typing, laugh at my own thoughts, and exist quietly in my little corner of the world. 馃槀
I've spent enough of my life proving that I can function in environments that exhaust me. Now I want to choose the ones that let me breathe. If I turn down the trip, the gathering, the meetup, the job, or the invitation, please don't automatically interpret it as rejection. Sometimes I'm simply choosing what works for me.
I've spent my whole life learning how to adapt, and now I'm learning that I don't have to keep pushing myself into situations just because I've proven that I can survive them. Survival is not the same thing as peace, and capability is not an obligation.
I'd rather spend this season writing the stories I have inside me and sharing the things I believe than constantly forcing myself back into situations that leave me drained. I have nothing against the world. I just finally found a quieter way to be in it. I can still connect with people without always being physically surrounded by them.
I can still communicate without always having to hear everything in real time. I can still be present without constantly exhausting myself to prove that I belong in the room.
So yeah, just send me a message. I'll reply. Don't expect me to pick up calls. 馃き
And if my cousin wants to call me bingi while I'm sitting there completely unbothered?
Let her.
Let's stop acting now. 馃ゴ
Photo is me and mine.鈽猴笍