Often I hear the phrase, “home is where the heart is”. It is such a soothing idea, to think that our homes are where are hearts are. To me, this implies that our homes (and therefore our hearts) are safe spaces, spaces where we are comfortable and ultimately a place we can fall back to when other places are too difficult or painful. However, in my experience as a person who is hard-of-hearing and have always used assistive hearing devices to function in the world, I have found that my heart is not my home. I have internalized the idea for such a long time that it is my body that is wrong. That if I don't hear people correctly, or at all, then it is me and my body that is the problem, rather than the culture and the navigation channels of this world are designed for those who are hearing. That being hearing is superior to being hard-of-hearing or deaf, and that deafness is a burden for family and friends. In short, my heart is not my home; but it should be, or at least, be one of them.
But creating this home goes beyond just feeling at home with being hard-of-hearing. Creating this home means that I have to destroy all the systems of privilege and oppression that my body interacts with, not just ableism, like working to dismantle systems of white privilege, male-bodied and masculine privilege, class privilege, and straight privilege. How can I separate class privilege and whiteness from my experiences with ableism when my cochlear implants cost multiple thousands of dollars and the access I have to the medical industrial complex when I choose? Creating this home also creates a space where I can experiment with my gender presentation, and embrace the queer side of me that still is struggling to find its way home too. Because dismantling all of these systems of privilege and oppression and isolation are my desires and dreams; and it would be a lie to to say that they weren't a part of me, of who I aim to be.
So I commit to making my heart, my sense of self, a place that I can call home. At least as much of a home as I possibly can. It can be through acts of self-care, spending time and building community with friends, it can be sitting next to my parent's garden, with my sound processors off and being totally deaf for as long as I feel like. The home gets built from the ruins of the walls and barriers of isolation that get destroyed; like the day that I couldn't join a group of friends to a movie because it would be too hard for me, and they called me to check in and make new plans if that was necessary to feel not left out; coming to the realization that that is how it should be, that being ignored or pitied shouldn't happen. This just goes to show that this is not a process of independence; this is a process of building interdependence, because if what use is having a home if I don't have friends and family to be there with me?
“And as for the false images: we need to name them, transform them, create something entirely new in their place. Something that comes close and finally true to the bone, entering our bodies as liberation, as joy, as fury, as a will to refigure the world.” –Eli Claire, “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness”
