I have to bend my EarPods for them to work

My apple EarPods don’t work unless I bend the aux cord at the end in a certain direction. Sometimes it won’t work at all and you’ll hear the music as if someone is playing music a few blocks away from you and it’s really echoey. Most of the time the left one works and the right one has absolutely no sound and even the bass on the left is gone and it’s like a bit high pitched. Now if I bend the end a certain direction it works perfectly in both ears but bending my headphones when I want to listen to music is not practical.