All at once, it feels like a saving and a drowning.
To discover I have hearing loss is like having someone reach down from a life raft and pull me into the bright light of understanding. Then, swiftly, echoes of earlier loss surge from the deep, pushing me under.
It makes sense that, instead of voices, I hear the ocean roaring.
This push and pull reminds me of how I’ve always found waves so majestic, alluring but othering. If I go deep enough, maybe the gaps in between, the mysterious deep blue decibels will be within reach again.
A close friend tells me that my phone is ringing.
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
I check and, yes, it is.
Another time, another friend, and it plays out the same.
I get the volume turned up and up and up.
I mishear the word “tail” for “towel”. Everyone laughs. I don’t.
I am prone to sudden collapse. You’ll find me fast asleep on a couch, spent from wrestling with an invisible strain.
Author Rae Choi. Source: Supplied
I grow used to asking someone to repeat themselves once, maybe twice, but three times is too much.
I call shotgun not so I get the best seat, but so I can see lips.
I hear high-pitched ringing and hissing in my right ear, and sometimes low, pulsating thudding in my left. I think I am underwater.
At the clinic, the audiologist gestures for me to enter her room.
Inside, I learn about tinnitus and how it can be an indicator of hearing loss.
It strikes me as both magical and cruel that our brains invent sounds to fill the gaps of what we cannot hear.
The audiologist asks me to take a seat in a soundproof booth and places a pair of headphones on my head. She passes me a clicker and prompts me to press the button whenever I hear a beep. I nod.
A sickness starts to pool in my belly. I feel like I am being tested for something I couldn’t study for.
“Next, you’ll hear a man say some words. Can you repeat them back to me?” More fervent nodding.
The test begins and I echo the words I hear:
“Wish.”
“Buzz.”
“Gap.”
“Rage.”
“Days. No. Waves.”
“Bone.”
“… I missed it.”
“Bed.”
“… Moon?”
The audiologist glances at me, “Okay, now going quieter. Just have your best guess.”
“Bath.”
“Hum?”
“Dip.”
“… Fine. I think?”
A long pause.
“Is there more? I can’t…”
When the audiologist prompts me to recall details of events – how, when, for how long – I come up empty. There are so many questions I cannot answer, questions about a childhood I’d neatly tucked away and pushed into the back of the closet like the toy clown my grandma, Po Po, gave me. The fear of remembrance hangs next to the pain of grief.
To reckon with my senses, or the lack of them, is to dredge up all the moments past, real or imagined, broken and unbroken, and trace my fingers over their edges, willing them to take familiar shape. It’s grieving what you thought your life would be like. It’s admitting that you even had an idea of what that was.
Rae Choi as a young girl with her Po Po in Brisbane. Source: Supplied
Later, I go to a theatre show and I cannot hear most of what’s said. During the interval, I approach an usher to ask if my friend and I can move to some vacant seats in the front row. Sensing the usher’s resistance, it’s the first time I ever utter the words “hard of hearing”, words that I nearly choke on but when they come out, they seem to amplify and echo through the theatre like I am speaking into a microphone, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Words so frank and true they render the unseen parts of me visible.
The usher’s eyes widen and they immediately step aside, leading us to our new seats.
Loss, though, I am also learning, does not necessarily mean lesser
The past floods back. This bodily loss brings up losses I’ve known before, but like the sounds I can’t hear, they too sank so deep they were out of reach. Loss, though, I am also learning, does not necessarily mean lesser.
I remember my grandma. Her love so strong it would catch me and wrap me up like delicious sticky rice. I could wedge myself safely and securely into her pillowy breasts, large and stretched out from the life they gave to seven children.
She was warm, fierce and cheeky. We must have had our own language because she didn’t know English and she never forced me to speak Mandarin. When my mother paved the way for her family to leave Malaysia for this faraway island, Po Po came with little more than her hard-earned humour and uncomplicated love. I know now that that was not enough for what is required to belong here, but back then it was more than enough for me.
The day Po Po’s power dwindled to the point of no return, when her body finally gave way to cancer, it was perfect outside as it often is here. I refused to say goodbye. Po Po had always let me have my way, I think because she knew too well what it was like to be powerless, and she never wanted me to feel it too. Except in this moment, when we were all up against something bigger than power itself.
Rae Choi as a baby with her Po Po. Source: Supplied
Bring me to your ear and you can hear the ocean. Bring me to your ear and hear me roar.
Rae Choi (she/her) is a Meanjin-based filmmaker and lawyer. She is currently working on her next short film which is based on this story, about a bereft woman haunted by phantom sounds and visitations by an unknown spirit. You can follow Rae on Instagram or .
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