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I am deaf in one ear. I'd go into the story about how that happened, but that's off the topic. The point is that I have to deal with it. I have to sit somewhere near the front of classrooms in order to hear. In noisy environments, I have to tilt my head to the left. I have to hold the phone up to my right ear all the time.¹ I do my best to not complain about my problem but to just make the best of it. Sometimes, I might have to ask someone to repeat something three times in a row, but I typically don't burden people with my problem. Often, my friends might poke fun at some of my mannerisms resulting from my being partially deaf. It really doesn't bother me… most of the time.

I don't know why, but hearing something tonight really kind of hurt me in a way that I can't explain. Normally, this kind of thing doesn't bother me, but, tonight, it did. I really don't know what to do, but I have to manage some how. Maybe, I'm just thinking too much about such a small thing.

Should I really be losing sleep over this?

1. Which is actually the better ear to hear out of. Linguistic processing is done in the left hemisphere of the brain, and the left hemisphere also controls the right ear. So, it is more efficient to hear language in the right ear than the left.