All Flared Up

I live in a country that’s not mine. A country where they speak a language within the language that I had to learn in order to live and work here. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I can understand the local dialect. But only when I relax my mind and lean into the way they shape their vowels and shorten their words.

When I am tired or in a rush, all the sounds run together as if it’s one big, long word. And I am lost.

I ran into my neighbor in our apartment complex hallway a few months ago. I was headed to work and he was walking up the stairs with his two young children, all three of them with beautiful silky, ebony hair and rich, brown eyes. He smiled and said, “Blah blah blah, blah blah.”

“Excuse me?” I said politely.

He repeated the same words, but this time louder, “Blah blah blah, blah blah!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand,” I said, heat prickling my cheeks.

The kids started getting restless. One tugged at his shirt.

It went on like this for several minutes. Me determined to understand. Him trying to get away, edging towards his apartment door with each repetition of his sentence.

His last attempt was so slow and deliberate that I could hear each syllable and each inflection. Finally, I got it. He had just wanted to tell me to say hello to my husband.

When I got home later that evening, I told my husband about it, “He will probably never want to say another word to me.”

“Oh, that’s not true. Don’t exaggerate,” my husband said.

But outside of hello, so far I’ve been right. My neighbor avoids me like the plague.

It’s not just the language, of course. It’s also the culture. There are things I could translate directly from English, things that in my country we say freely and without thinking about it. But they would be entirely inappropriate here. You don’t know this at first. In fact, it takes years to learn these subtleties.

‘I love you’ is one of these phrases. In my country, you can love anything. Ice-cream, bike-riding, knitting, nature, friends, family members, lovers. There are no special words to distinguish the love you have for friends versus the love you have for your intimate partner.

This is not true here. You like things. You like your friends. But you love your spouse or boy/girlfriend. To say you love a person, is to say that you really love them – that you are attracted to them. You want to be with them in an intimate way.

Not long after I started my job, I decided to give my boss a small gift to show my appreciation for all she had done for me. She had taken a chance on me when no one else was willing to do so and had given me my very first job here. I felt incredibly indebted to her.

I tucked the gift into my coat pocket. When I arrived at work, my boss was in the waiting room. The secretary was at the front desk and all of the chairs were filled with patients waiting to be called back for their appointments.

“I have a little something for you,” I said and handed her the gift right there, in front of everyone.

She smiled brightly, her eyes glinting with surprise. “Oh, wow. Thank you! But what is the occasion?”

And then the words slipped out. Without thinking. Without screening myself. An automatic response. “Because, I love you,” I said.

Her face flushed crimson and her eyes darted behind me to the people in the waiting room. I knew immediately what my transgression was. “That is so kind of you, thank you,” she said. She tapped my shoulder and said, “I will open it later.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. Already formulating my strategy to apologize later.

During my lunch break, my boss entered the break room. “Oh, man. I am so sorry! You know in my culture, we say things like that. It just slipped out. But you know what I meant, right?”

“Yes, yes, it’s ok. I know,” she said and laughed warmly. I felt my body relax and I laughed with her. “Don’t worry at all. Just keep being yourself. It’s lovely,” she told me. Her gesture of understanding was exceptionally gracious. I was lucky she had traveled extensively and spent time living abroad. She got it in ways others might not have.

Note to self: don’t tell anyone (outside of your partner) that love you them.

Almost all my interactions these days are conducted in a world that lives outside my culture and my native language. As hard as I try to form sounds English doesn’t have, I can’t hide my accent. Some find it endearing. Others grating. Either way, they know within minutes that I a a foreigner, an outsider, a stranger.

The thing is, everything I do here has an added level of difficulty for me. When I work, I think and write in English, but speak another language. There I things I want to say, ways I could elegantly make a point, but it falls short when it’s not English. It probably comes across sounding childish. Not at all a match for my 54 years.

The post office, the supermarket, the pharmacy – these all have their challenges for me. Sometimes I can anticipate what the employees will say and am prepared in advance. But other times they throw in something completely new and I am totally lost.

And then there are the doctors appointments. Even though I have a decent mastery of the language I need here, it is still extremely difficult to talk about my health issues. The medical jargon in itself is tricky. Then there are other layperson, health-related expressions and vocabulary that are entirely new to me. I have to be careful that I do not answer something incorrectly just because I think I understood it right. Because more often than not, I am wrong.

At least my hepatologist speaks English. At first, I felt my ego puff up a bit when she automatically started speaking English with me without even asking. But then I realized what a gift it is to discuss my health in my native tongue. Every once in awhile, she says a word in her native language that she doesn’t know in English and I get a boost of pride that I can translate it for her.

It’s true what they say, living abroad is completely different from visiting a country. The romance dies down after a few months and the reality sets in. Things will drive you crazy. You will struggle to understand why they do things they way they do. You will think you know better. That your way makes much more sense. You will make huge blunders, but not realize it until it is too late.

It stays this way until your surrender. Until you reach a place of acceptance.

The last step, most important of all, is how to balance this acceptance with the desire to be yourself. Who are you within the confines of this new culture? How can you be authentic, but at the same time respectful? This is no easy feat.

Even after six years of living abroad and all the acceptance I can manage, there are still days that are really tough. Days when I just don’t care anymore. So, I laugh loudly. I tell people I love them. I swear freely. I talk to strangers in the supermarket. I throw caution to the wind and put a piece of cardboard in the regular trash can.

I let myself be myself. Even if just for a moment. And damn, does it feel good!