I have a hard time hearing men. This is not a metaphor. Many jokes could be made here. Some might say that a diminished capacity to hear a large swath of the global population might have its advantages. Others might argue the opposite. But since my hearing condition is not my choice, I haven't yet gotten to the joke part, or the silver lining part, because I'm still trying to understand how I could have lived my whole life up to now without knowing I had this condition.
Early this year I learned that I have a rare type of hearing loss called a cookie-bite, so named because the audiogram appears to show a chunk missing from mid-frequency sounds. As the audiologist explained to me, most male voices are in this range. The loss is genetic — no event triggered the condition. It is simply the way my auditory system is built, likely from birth.
