"What if you were cured?"
This is a question I get a lot, usually after sharing that I am deaf and I do not speak English. Deaf people get this in general. We've likely been asked this thousands of times in our lifetimes.
Most people treat it as a casual, sometimes playful question. Like it's something that would have a "why, yes, I'd love to be hearing!" answer. As if it's obvious that everyone who's ever deaf or disabled should simply choose to be abled. As if it's even remotely easy to get that kind of treatment, to simply learn a language you've never even heard, to simply have your ears altered to take on a small, artificial fraction of the full range of hearing people have.
I've been asked that question so much that it all sounds like "Why don't you just die?" to me.
I'm used to shrugging it off and I constantly educate people about deaf culture and accessibility and why these kinds of questions are wrong. Now, I'm surrounded by people who defend me if this is asked. It's a nice balm to the decades of isolation and pain I've been through, particularly when I rarely find any deaf people online or in person.
