Every few weeks, I’ll launch myself into some new experience. It’s inevitable I suppose.. as one step lays the foundation for another, and I slowly reintegrate aspects of my previously lived life.
Saturday night, I had one of those experiences and had to meet up with a young man, I’d first met about 2 years ago, as an Uber driver. We had struck up a conversation which I’m still not sure how my Spanish tongue got through. We stayed in touch, but this is a young man – the generation of easy going, and cool… Cool, like cool-kid cool, ya’know ?
On WhatsApp, I practice my Spanish by typing what I want to say, then checking its meaning, and correcting myself before sending. In real life, there is no interface for ‘correct’..whatever I say in the moment, well, that’s it.. imperfect as it is.
So, in person, I was awkward..so awkward, and I always forget, it’s slap, then bounce.. and my Trinidadian muscle memory always goes for the bounce first.. Dag. Not cool. I’m not cool.
“Spanish-speaking me is so awkward.”
I framed it like this at first, but I’m wanting to reframe it.
It could be, that in a language that is not my first language, I am more instinctively myself, because I don’t have the language to fake a filter.
The longer the words take to come, the more my energy carries the conversation.
As we part, he reaches out his hands for a handshake. Is this what my energy says about me? No slap, bounce for me…right, right. I tell myself it’s my debonair, uncle vibe. It helps with reframing ‘I’m not cool’.
#EmotionalHealing #SelfDiscovery #FindingYourVoice #InnerWork #PersonalGrowth #Introspection #LanguageLearning #ReclaimingIdentity #PoeticReflection #HealingJourney
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