Lost in Language

Living in a land where everything is conducted in a language that's not my birth tongue gives me very different sensitivities. It's harder to pick up on subtleties and details. I have to ask a lot more questions or just be content with not completely knowing. Sometimes I realize that I don't know the rules of certain types of conversations. I find myself wondering things like, "Would it be more appropriate to continue expressing some sort of sympathy right now or should I just be quiet?" "Was that supposed to be funny? And if so, why? Should I be amused or saddened?" Also, while I can't shut off my ability to process English, if I accidentally (or not-so-accidentally, for example, when I'm on the bus) space out, Portuguese words can become like background noise.

On another level, I am so much more sensitive to emotions. Operating in a language that's not my own makes me more vulnerable. And if I switch "on" and really listen to what people are saying, which I try to do most of the time, I sometimes "feel" what they are saying even more easily than I can pick apart individual words. And when I'm in this space of "feeling," everything hits me deeper.

Recently I was in an interview with a boy, deeply addicted to drugs. He was uttering something like, "I've tried to stop, but I can't." Exactly what he uttered evaporated for me after I heard it, but the meaning behind the words felt like a physical punch, especially as they crossed the table and hit the boy's mother, who was trying, trying, trying to contain her own sea of emotions.

It's as though I'm watching the words acting on the people saying them and receiving them. And hours after the meeting, the feelings stick to me and become something I must ponder and untangle and make some sort of sense of before I can free myself from them.

And, when I am tired, Spanish words sometimes come to mind quicker than Portuguese ones. This is funny to me because right now, with both languages rattling around in my brain, speaking Spanish is difficult. When I'm tired it's hard to pronounce Portuguese without sounding like I'm swallowing words. Sometimes I do really feel like the words are fighting me, trying to jump down my throat exactly as I'm trying to push them out of my mouth. I'm certain that my vocabulary has improved since I've gotten here, that I'm speaking less Portuñol and more actual Portuguese. But I also feel less confident at times, wondering if perhaps it's because I realize how much more there is to learn, how much more there is to understand of this beautiful, melodic language.

I think that we exercise different parts of ourselves with each language that we speak. I'm curious to pay more attention to how I am when I'm speaking English vs. Portuguese vs. Spanish. Right now I seem to enjoy it most, after long days in Portuguese, when I'm talking with A. and our conversations weave in between Portuguese and English, with Spanish sprinkled in every once and a while. Perhaps that's why Spanglish has always felt so comforting. Maybe I just don't like to choose between one thing and the other but to mix it all together into an interesting, ever-changing concoction.