It took years for Manon to find out she is practically deaf

“‘Do you have a bonus card?’ “Would you like a receipt?” ‘How are you?”Busy?’ People always say the same thing,” says Manon. “I am now so old that Ihave had every conversation at least once. I have my frames of reference, readbody language and can read lips well.”

Less than ten minutes earlier, Manon opened the door as if she’d heard thebell, introduced herself, and responded to a question. ‘Coffee or tea?’ sheasked and led me into the kitchen. “Tea please,” I said to her back. She madea pot of tea. For a moment there was doubt: is this woman really that hard ofhearing?

This is exactly what Manon’s book is about Deaf! It took more than twentyyears before Manon made an appointment with an otolaryngologist. He put her ina quiet room, without distractions, with headphones on. She needed to hearwords, but heard only vowels. Was that ‘a’ for cheese or a vase? “I missed thecontext and so I was blown away.”

“Take away the environment, the body language and the lips and I don’t hearanything,” she says. Manon is not completely deaf, but hard of hearing with abroken middle register. She only hears vowels. Not the ticking of the clock,the hum of the fridge or the doorbell (“I knew you were coming”), but she justheard the “e” for tea, and she reached her conclusion.

Everything could be explained

The hearing loss has been gradual and Manon thinks she didn’t notice becauseshe adapted so quickly. For a long time no one thought about her poor hearing.Her partner Paul, who is a musician, is not. Not her daughter Evi. Friendsdon’t.

It was easier to come up with an explanation for everything. That tram shedidn’t hear coming? That was simply because it is so cold, then the sounddies. Giving weird answers when you asked her something at a party? That womanmust have been ADHD. The TV that can no longer hear well? How badly adjustedthe sound was! The plumber who told her that her baby had been crying for 15minutes: she was so engrossed in her work that she didn’t hear it.

Doof is a story full of explanations about everyday things that often end inabsurdist scenes. Take that one time when three women stood screaming aboveManon’s bed. “I am most ashamed of this,” says Manon.

It was at a two-day book event, and she’d been knocked out that night aftersigning her previous book. “Writing names in books is tough when you only hearthe vowels. IA, is that Ria, Lina, Linda? It could be anything, I usually justguessed and saw from the facial expression whether I was right or not.” Shelaughs at it, but admits that it is grueling to work like this. So after thattiring day she fell into a deep sleep. “As soon as I close my eyes, I don’thear anything anymore. I see sound.”

Three screaming women at the bed

Manon hadn’t heard the next morning that the women had called her countlesstimes. “After a while they came to the conclusion: she died in her sleep, thathad to be done. Only when one of them put a hand on my shoulder did I wake upwith a start. Three screaming women were standing at my bed in total panic.scared of me, I of them.”

And still no one thought of deaf.

“There was an explanation for everything, but not once did I look to myself.”Manon tells about her daughter Evi, who, when she was little, always stood infront of her when she asked something. “I think she was conditioned that way;if she wasn’t in front of me, I just wouldn’t react.”

Even after several examinations at the ENT and subsequent diagnosis, Manon didnot believe it. “I thought there was something gross in my ear that needed tobe fixed. Besides, I heard what he said, didn’t I? How could that be?”

Talking is like hangman

Context, lip reading, body language. Interpreting signals and filling insentences, something she had been doing unconsciously for years and had sointernalized that for a while she thought she was clairvoyant. “Words can lie,but body language can’t. It gives much more accurate information.”

One-on-one conversations like this go quite well. “When I talk to you now,it’s like hangman, I hear sounds and turn them into words. But it takes a lotof effort.”

After the diagnosis, the queen of hangman wanted to continue playing the gamerather than say that she was practically deaf. “Out of shame I guess. BecauseI didn’t want everyone to treat me differently.”

Until it really got out of hand. The amount of deaf blunders piled up. Manontried hearing aids and heard again for the first time in years. “What a dramathat was! For years I lived in a serene silence and suddenly there was soundeverywhere. It drove me crazy.”

Many sounds were so long ago for Manon that she could no longer place them. “Ithought all the time: what is that noise? There were too many stimuli. Icouldn’t think like that, could I?”

Shut off from the outside world

Yet she persevered, for months. It was her beloved dog Willem, her long-standing support and refuge, who gave Manon an important insight. “He died ofold age and just accepted that. He stopped eating and drinking. When he died,I took off those hearing aids. I thought: I’ll just accept it.”

Back to the peace, the silence. “When I do Google, all I see are limitations:isolation, unemployment, hearing aids. Nothing good comes out of it. Whileevery religion, every mindfulness course, every better-life strategy focuseson peace and quiet , on silence. Look outside, everyone walks in withearphones in and wants to shut themselves off from the outside world for awhile. I just got it for free and it’s beautiful.”

Manon does not go to parties, dinners or crowded gatherings. As a writer, shecan afford to spend her days in her writing room. She lives as she calls itherself as an English country woman (little side note: she lives in the middleof Amsterdam). She likes horses, dogs, gardening and cooking. “In everything Ilike to do, I don’t need sound. The question is, am I living this way becauseI don’t have audio, or is it actually my natural way of life? I don’t know.”

Honest about deafness

After years, an unprecedented change took place: she began to share the secretshe had kept quiet for so long: she was honest about her deafness. Whathappened? “I was not seen as a pariah, which I was so afraid of, everyone wasnice and helpful. People sat across from me, spoke more clearly. When I had ameeting, someone asked: do you see all the mouths correctly?”