Hunger for sound

The office I work at is far too quiet.

It’s not, really. I mean, all the sounds I heard today, on my first day back after the six-week journey, were amazing. It wasn’t so long ago that I was longing for these simple sounds. Elevator commentary. Kitchen chats. Bluff-free conversations with my colleagues. Problem-solving via face-to-face chats instead of carefully drafted emails.

I heard all that today.

Trucks pulling up in the laneway beside the building. Rain falling … before it hit the windows.

Heard that.

There were people sneezing down the hallway. Liquid paper pens being shaken. The stirring of spoons in coffee mugs. Papers shuffling. Handbag zippers. Phone conversations. Chatter. Typing sounds or the scrolling of a mouse. My computer’s fan.

Heard all that too.

Sometimes I could hear footsteps approaching on the carpet – that blew me away! How nice to turn around and greet someone before noticing their reflection in the window, or before having been startled by a tap on the shoulder!

But to be honest, all these sounds (great as they were) were a bit of a bore for my brain today. Where was the listening challenge? After being put through four hours of rehab for almost every day for the last few weeks, my brain now demands constant sound. Speech amidst loud background noise. Music. Radio. Television. There hasn’t been silence in my house for weeks! I’ve been listening to layer upon layer of sound and forcing my brain to differentiate one from the other. It’s been my own personal way of reinstating my place in the ‘hearing world’ once more. From one end of the scale to another. Like extreme, er, hearing.

Ah, what a turnaround. The quiet office environment was often my saviour during those years of deafness years but today, for the first time ever, I entertained the notion of working in the building industry instead. (Kidding. Maybe army combat.)

 

But even though my office might lack the sounds I’m after, I’ve gotta admit – I love the flipside. The flipside is 100% speech recognition because it is quiet. The flipside is walking through that doorway without the stress. The anxiety. The fear that a background sound as simple as a phone ringing, or a person coughing, is going to drown out the words of the person in front of me. Gone.

I’ll take that.