Tomorrow's Adventure

Tomorrow the girls and I are all going to get our hearing tested.  We're going to have standard hearing tests, and then we're going to be tested for CAPD--Central Auditory Processing Disorder.

I was tested for this as a teenager, and diagnosed, but the records were lost.

I hear fine when it's quiet.  I don't miss much.  Sometimes I even hear things nobody else notices.  For many years I could hear high pitches that nobody else could hear.  It's the sounds of conversation that I have the most trouble with.

I don't hear very well when there's background noise.  If the washer or dryer are running, or if someone's washing dishes, I miss things.  I read an example in a book once--a child hears, 'Your goat is dead'., and it's only her horrified expression that alerts her parents to the fact that something is wrong.  Her father had just told her to 'go to bed'.  So if I respond to something in a very unusual manner, it might just be that I'm weird.  Or it might be that I didn't hear what you said correctly.

We'll see if I'm correct in my guess that one of my children has this--the one about whom I've always said affectionately that giving her directions in lists of more than zero things to do is too much.  She's always had kind of a piercing voice, too.  Maybe it's because she's assuming we can't hear her.  I was told as a teenager that I had to lower my voice, that my voice was too 'shrill'.  The voice you hear now is a little lower-pitched than it used to be, intentionally.

Anyway, if I'm at a party where an air conditioner is running, or at church after a service when everybody is talking, I might be for all practical purposes nearly deaf.  No doubt this confuses people.  I could hear them before, and now I can't.  I appear to be ignoring people when I simply didn't hear them.  I reply to things 'weirdly'.

I remember once at dinner at someone's house, hearing my husband say, 'Oh, look, a bug!' and then seeing him pick something up off the table and eat it.  I'm fairly sure that's not what he really said.

If other people are confused, you can imagine, perhaps, how confusing life is for me, as well.  I often don't hearing what's being said, or don't hear it correctly.  Then, on top of that, I don't recognize who it is that said it.  I am basically screwed socially.  And then there's the constant problem with getting lost....

So tomorrow we go to get tested, all five of us.  I hope I can find the place.  I've only been there once before.  And we're supposed to have an hour for lunch during this day of testing.  I've asked my husband for directions to a nearby restaurant, but he hasn't given them to me yet.  If he doesn't before tomorrow morning, we'll have to skip lunch.  There isn't any possibility of me simply driving away, finding a restaurant, and then finding my way back.  I know there are several restaurants nearby.  A there's a possibility that my husband won't work tomorrow, in which case he might drive us there and stay, and take us to lunch.

I hate having to be so dependent.  I can't get lunch without help, can't run errands toward the end of this day, like grocery shopping.  I have to stay at the doctor's office so I won't get lost.  I don't want to have to explain to the people at the doctor's office why we're not eating lunch.  They might think I'm crazy.  They might try to give me directions which I can't follow.  The directions have to be given to me just right, or they don't make sense.  Very simple, with names of streets and very clear landmarks that I can find easily.  And then I have to memorize the route there.  And the route back.  And still I might very well get lost if I haven't had a chance to practice first.  It's as if I'm retarded.

These days, if I have time beforehand, I sometimes go to Google Earth, if I've had the route explained to me first, or if it's very close to one of the few places I know.  It's very confusing, but sometimes I can get some idea of what kinds of landmarks there are that would help me find a place.  I get lost on Google Earth all the time, but there aren't any consequences.  I can spend an hour getting lost over and over and everything is fine.  No harm done.  No gas money wasted.

So, I can't leave any of my children at the doctor's office, because, well, what would happen if I couldn't find the place again?  A crisis would ensue, where I would have to try to find someone (and I hardly have anyone) to go and get the kids that I had just dropped off a few hours ago.  It would be bad enough to miss the last two appointments of the day.  I wouldn't even be able to tell someone where the place is.  It's very close to the family doctor we've been seeing for years, and I still use a map to get to that.

Trying to use my words to explain to someone how to get somewhere is ridiculously hard--I can't even tell people how to get to the house I've lived in for twenty years.

I've been developing a bit of an attitude.  The other day my children needed a ride.  My husband had a meeting, and he could take two of them to a church function at a teacher's house, but he couldn't pick them up.  And he couldn't find anyone to help him.  It looked as if I was going to have to pick them up, and I had absolutely no idea where the house was.  And it was going to be dark.  On top of everything else, I have very poor night vision.  As if I don't have enough to deal with.

There have been times when I've been lost for two or three hours trying to drive to an unfamiliar place.  Once I wound up in another city.  That was during the day.  When I get lost, I can't even find my way home again.

So I called my father.  I hadn't wanted to do it, but he was really nice about it.  But as soon as I told him the address, after telling him my husband would tell him how to get there, he started asking the questions.  Like, "is that near the pool?"  What pool?  I don't even have any idea what neighborhood it's in.  Is there a pool?

It all worked out in the end.  But I am getting extremely tired of trying to keep people from finding out that I have no maps in my head.  I don't want them to think I'm stupid, or crazy, or being difficult.  People just don't generally understand how my brain works.  If I were blind, it would come as no surprise to anyone that I don't know where anything is.  But I have to explain to every single person, usually repeatedly.  Sometimes they never do get it.

It's gotten to the point where I've been willing to have arguments with people--this is just the way it is, and I can't do anything about it.  I almost had one with my husband the other night.  I had to tell him that I could go and try to pick up the girls, but it was quite possible that they'd be waiting for me for a long time as I wandered aimlessly in the dark.  I might very well never have found the place.  And I'm finished apologizing for it.  I wish I could stop being this way, to avoid the arguments with people.  I wish I could just be cooperative.  I find myself thinking it's not fair that my husband has to be the one to drive the kids places, and then I have to remind myself--I've been doing my best to get them to doctors' appointments.  I do pretty much everything at home, in an effort to pull my own weight.  Or in an effort to prove I'm not a lazy slacker.

I really have to work on not feeling guilty because there are a couple of things I can't do.  Once or twice a week, something comes up that I can't handle.  I don't deserve to feel like a failure because of that.

We're starting to try to make plans for what we'll do if my husband gets deployed.  I don't have anybody except my parents to ask for help.  I may have to have my kids help me contact people at their church, where I'll have to explain to people, 'I have no idea how to get my kids to their church activities--maybe I can learn eventually to get to one or two easy-to-get-to places.  And by the way, I won't recognize any of you when I'm dropping the kids off.'

It's not fair that my kids have had to share in my isolation.  I don't want them to stop going to church for a year if my husband's gone.  I won't be going to church--they're all old enough to take care of themselves for a couple of hours at least.  And....I don't want to feel sorry for myself.  I don't want to whine.  But being in a big noisy room full of people I can't recognize is just silly.  I've stopped doing that to myself.  And I am legitimately concerned that my presence will have an adverse effect on my kids' popularity at church.  I don't want them to once again have to be the kids of that woman who doesn't work and might be lazy, or maybe retarded.  I don't want to complain, but I don't want to put myself once again in the position of having to do something that I am going to fail at over and over again no matter how hard I try, so I can watch people glare at me disapprovingly and end up sitting alone in a corner.  Maybe I like myself too well these days to do that to myself.