Last Friday, I spent the whole day with my niece and nephew. We went to buy some falafel but of course, stores were closed as it was the weekend and the time prior Friday prayer. After walking a while, we finally found an open restaurant. My niece and nephew had their falafel, played with each other and fought sometimes while I was cooking. Then, we had cake and milk as snack together.

After a short break, my niece, nephew and I started making cookies. My nephew helped cracking the egg and thankfully, we saved it before it fell outside the bowl. They also shaped the dough into balls and flatted it out.

While baking the cookies in the oven, my three-year-old niece approached me asking a question I couldn’t understand: “Is that your …..?”

She was pointing at my home t-shirt. I asked her to repeat and what I could hear was something like: “Is that your friend?” I looked at my shirt and thought she might have imagined the colorful shapes as a friend. I confidently said yes.

Then, she asked another question which I couldn’t figure it out either: “Could I ….?” Before asking her to repeat, my five-year-old nephew who was pooping in the next-door bathroom loudly said: “No, you don’t get breastfed anymore.”

I had an aha moment and burst into laughter. At that aha moment, everything became clear. In the beginning, she asked; “Is that your breast?” then she wondered if she could get breastfed from my breast.

It's true that most little children don’t say words correctly or even make proper sentences. For instance, my niece doesn’t pronounce the R correctly which was in the Arabic word for breast. That makes it difficult to understand them, so I turn into my nephew to interpret what my niece says.

Nevertheless, in my case, this is how most people sound to me, not only children. I mean my hearing impairment with my “Case”. Whenever someone talks to me, there are often letters missing and words misheard so my mind always works hardly to make sense of everything said. Sometimes, I hear the whole sentence except for one word; that key word that due to missing it, I can’t make a clue of the whole phrase.

Unhearing or mishearing that word shifts the conversation completely into a different direction. I sometimes laugh it off but other times, it’s so embarrassing that there’s no way to make a joke of it, especially during the days my depression takes over.

In other situations, I don’t get what’s said until a few seconds. My brain lags behind until it works out blurry words and make up a proper sentence. By that time, the conversation ends or shifts into a different topic.

I hear and mishear. I laugh and cry. I stumble and keep going. This is my life in a nutshell.

A friend suggested that I learn a sign language. It sounded like a good idea as it might be better than going through all of this hassle regarding mishearing every day. But then, I realized that no one I know knows a sign language and I doubt that they would be willing to learn it.

Also, if I learn a sign language, which one should I learn? The Egyptian, the British, the American or the Sinhala? I have multinational friends who speak different languages and I’d like to be able to communicate with all of them.

Life, for all, is so complicated but for hearing impaired people, it’s quite bumpy and difficult to steer.