Consider invisible disabilities before judging others
“Why is your husband rude, aloof, and anti-social? I called out to him at our community center and he ignored me”. What Do I Think? I often feel antisocial, aloof, and alone in noisy, crowded spaces. It’s not by choice—I have a disability that makes these situations incredibly difficult. For a long time, I thought I was the only one until I discovered a Facebook group of 5,400 others with the same condition: Single-Sided Deafness (SSD) . For many of us, this condition came on suddenly and without explanation. My right ear stopped functioning between 2 and 4 a.m. on July 1, 2012. The cause? Idiopathic—medical jargon for “we have no clue.” One member of the Facebook group summarized our shared struggles perfectly: “No one can see the fact that I have no idea who is talking to me or where any sound is coming from. No one can see how hard my brain is working to make sense of what I hear. No one can see how exhausted I am.” Single-Sided Deafness often comes with a cruel two-for-one sp...