When I was thirteen, towards the end of the eighth grade, I noticed that I couldn’t hear the high pitch of a stopwatch or the volleyball coach’s whistle anymore. It took a few months and more doctor visits than I could count on my hands, but eventually it was determined that I have “severe nerve damage” in my ears “of unknown origin.”

Although I’m mostly missing higher pitches – the sound of birds chirping, or certain notes on a violin, for instance – I still find myself asking others to repeat themselves in casual conversation, especially in the presence of background noise. My first pair of hearing aids was replaced, more than four years after I received them, with the newest technology on the market, but even now, equipped with a volume switch and a mute button, I still find myself reading lips everywhere I go. While it may be just a habit after almost five years of hearing loss, it definitely came in handy once I lost almost all of my remaining hearing to earplugs.

I didn’t “get rid” of my hearing on a whim – I had been enrolled in an online Deaf Culture course for a month or two before the professor gave us our most difficult project: live the life of a deaf person for an entire day. The task at hand seemed relatively easy, or so I thought. All I had to do was leave my hearing aids at home and replace them with hearing aids; simple! But any deaf person will tell you, it doesn’t end there.

Not wearing my hearing aids was odd for me. Mine are big and blue, as I prefer not to hide them. I’d like people to notice them behind my ears before I tell them that I have issues hearing, but this means that it was quite noticeable that they weren’t behind my ears. It was an odd experience being able to balance a pen behind my ear for the first time in years without having something in the way.

The earplugs I used were both oddly shaped and not quite the right size for my ears, and therefore left a bit of what I would call residual hearing – maybe ten to twenty percent of what a hearing person would experience – and a slight pain that I assume the Deaf don’t naturally encounter. I had wanted to go completely deaf and rely solely on reading lips, but I was afraid to push anything other than the earplugs into my ears and risk damaging my ears or hearing any further.

The day started at seven o’clock in the morning, when I was awoken by my vibrating alarm clock – one specifically designed for the Deaf/hard of hearing and heavy sleepers. The vibrating pad underneath my pillow buzzed as lights flashed from the clock on my nightstand, and it wasn’t long before I was out of bed and pushing the earplugs in. (Although it was second nature to reach for my hearing aids first.)

I explained the project to my parents before they left for work in the morning, and while my father spoke over his shoulder at me, my mother was quick to enunciate and face me each time she began to speak – we even used the sign for “I love you” as they left. My brother, meanwhile, wasn’t bad at facing me to speak, but was oblivious to the fact that his shouts down the stairs wouldn’t reach me. As I stood in the foyer, unsure of what upstairs room he was in, it felt as if I was leaving someone a voicemail: “Hi, it’s me, I don’t know where you are or if you can hear me, but I’ll be in the car waiting for you – could you please hurry up? Thanks, bye!”

The drive to school was interesting in a way that I hadn’t expected. My usual routine of connecting my phone to my car radio via Bluetooth became unnecessary, and I was unsure of what to do with myself without music. Towards the middle of the drive I attempted to use the radio to fill the quiet, but by the time I had reached a volume I could finally hear through the earplugs and feel in my body, my brother had covered his ears with his hands and frantically mouthed to turn it off.

For the remainder of the drive, my hands stayed at ten and two, my radio stayed off, and the only sound I could hear – and feel – was that of the car’s engine. Talking with my brother during the drive became difficult, because although I had decided to speak to those around me instead of sign or write, he still could not speak to me and knows no sign language. In order to read his lips, I had to face him instead of the road, which made both of us nervous. I did most of the talking and he did all of the listening, and once I ran out of things to say, we dropped back into silence. Although my brother was still sitting in the passenger seat beside me, he was almost completely out of my line of sight and I managed to forget that he was there altogether.

I’d never had a period of reflection before nine o’clock in the morning, but the drive to school certainly gave me the opportunity. Since the very few sounds I heard seemed incredibly far away, I was left to my own thoughts, and I found myself going over the details and occurrences of previous days; humming a song that was stuck in my head; wondering what school would be like that day. More thoughts than usual. These times to myself during the day ranged from peaceful to anxiety-inducing, and I couldn’t simply turn on music to drown out my own thoughts. I will admit, however, that I began to admire the visual things around me more often, such as the trees lining the roads or the colorful poster boards and photos on the classroom walls.

The vast majority of my classmates are comfortable with and knowledgeable about my hearing aids and hearing loss, but the situation became oddly delicate when they noticed orange rubber sticking out of my ears instead of the familiar blue sitting behind them. So delicate, in fact, that until I brought it up, nobody had said anything about them. Once I did, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief in my surrounding area that the elephant in the room was finally addressed. It had never occurred to me that they considered asking too many questions – or any questions at all – rude.

Since reading lips at school comes naturally to me, it wasn’t a huge challenge or obstacle, and nobody had to write anything on the notepad I brought with me just in case. Several times I asked friends to repeat themselves slowly, so I could catch the consonants they formed with their lips, and I had trouble tracking the teacher’s mouth as he walked around the room. The hardest part of communicating and understanding others at school was the constant eye movement that was required – back and forth and back again – to follow a conversation quickly enough to catch every word. In some instances, I was able to use context clues, sometimes I asked for a repetition, and other times I just gave up altogether.

A vague feeling of isolation crept in through the gaps of the earplugs, but thankfully class let out before it manifested into anything more sinister. I’ve often complained about my “hearing purgatory” – that is, being somewhere in the middle of hearing and not hearing – and how I wish that I could either hear everything or nothing at all. After this experience, though, I’m on the fence.

Many hearing individuals assume that the Deaf are isolated and miserable, and I can see why that would be their first guess. Since the majority of the world is based on audible communication, those who don’t know enough sign language to communicate with other Deaf individuals – like me – and can’t hear enough to speak or understand spoken language are certainly at a disheartening disadvantage.

Additionally, it occurred to me during this experiment that mental illness is prevalent among the Deaf for a reason. I have struggled with depression for many years, and in being able to hear nothing but my own thoughts, they turned darker and more doubtful much quicker than usual. After just one day of deafness, I felt left behind in conversation, isolated from my friends and family, and alone in a hearing world. At some points during the day I found that I blamed myself for not being able to read lips better. I should know, I thought. I’m hard of hearing, I read lips for assistance on a daily basis. I should be better.

Although I don’t run many errands on school days, I was determined to experience the most I could while Deaf. The night before the project I learned basic signs in ASL that I figured I could use to make myself understood, until I realized that I’m the only person I know who knows more than the alphabet in sign language – there was no way I could rely on sign language to make myself understood at any given grocery store. I was nervous in the checkout line at the grocery store because I wanted to understand and be understood, and I was able to read the cashier’s lips and infer. I asked her to repeat herself once, and she did without question. I didn’t tell her I was “Deaf,” she didn’t ask about my earplugs and was incredibly polite, and I was relieved and a little proud of myself as I walked out with my purchases.

In the afternoon I did my homework by myself, and the Deafness was helpful. I didn’t have to focus on tuning anything out, and I worked diligently to finish most of my assignments for the week. My father put a movie on, and since I often ask for subtitles on a normal day, he was perfectly fine with using them. This meant, though, that I was unable to multitask while watching the movie, as my full attention was required to read the subtitles. Dinnertime was the only part of the day during which anyone wrote to me. Lip reading is hard enough to begin with, but when the person has food in your mouth while you’re straining to catch their lip movements, it becomes a bit nauseating as well.

At the end of the day, when I finally took out the earplugs, I was jarred as every sound I’d missed during the day rushed into my ears. It was an interesting and eye-opening experience, and most certainly one I’d try again, perhaps once I learned more sign language and taught a few of my friends and family members. Although I have hearing loss and wear hearing aids every day, there’s a huge difference between partial hearing and complete Deafness, and I have a new respect now for those who are Deaf full-time. Additionally, this experience has made me even more interested in Deaf culture and learning sign language, and it is absolutely something I encourage others to consider.