I am currently suffering from a strange identity crisis that seems to be leaving me in a rather rebellious state of mind. I have lived overseas for a long period of time before (South Africa) but didn't feel enormously disconnected because I was in an essentially English speaking country. Moving to Spain, while geographically much closer, has proven to be an exponentially larger mental leap.
The first thing that happens when you arrive in a truly 'foreign' country (which for my purposes here constitutes a country in which English is not one of the main official languages) is that you realise that you can't actually communicate with anyone.
I wasn't one of these who arrives in a terra incognita expecting everyone to speak English. I arrived with a working knowledge of Spanish. I was by no mean fluent, but could make myself sort of understood using a clever combination of painstakingly constructed sentences using creaking present tense, laughably bad attempts at future and past tenses, along with expansive hand gesturing and meaningful looks.. I thought this was good. It worked well in bars, which, let's face it, are my natural habitat. It is only when I moved to actually live in Spain that I realised how total my linguistic impotence was, and what's more, how vulnerable and powerless that inability to communicate makes you feel. I am a communicator by trade and found (still find at times) the experience of being unable to express myself especially restrictive and frustrating.
All the colloquialisms people naturally use mean that what you learnt at school is completely bloody useless, overly formal and (to the Spanish) faintly amusing. Basically forget chatting amiably to people. Not only that, if someone veers off the 'script' in a shop or restaurant you are left blinking in confusion, startled and panicking like a rabbit-in-the-headlights. You can't make jokes or enjoy the true and deep connection that moments of real silliness bring. I miss those.
Another problem is that, well, how to put this...I am quite opinionated. I have things to say, points to make, valid and important things to share with the world *chortle* and with the language barrier it's a battle to sound even vaguely competent, let alone worthwhile. You sit there expressing yourself like a 10 year old child while quietly fuming. Fuming is bad for you. It adds wrinkles and gives me a headache.
The key here: you are taken back to a point in your life when you were learning everything for the first time. Your grasp of language and how to express larger concepts is pretty tenuous. You are effectively a child again and it is AWFUL! Something you have spent a lifetime perfecting is rendered totally useless.
A year on, I still get scuppered by simple things like calling a doctor's to make an appointment. And what about calling the police or an ambulance? Don't even get me started on trying to take out insurance or open a bank account. Things that you can do easily at home take real preparation and courage to do when you don't have a complete command of the language. It is not helped by the soul destroying amount of bureaucracy, paperwork and hoop-jumping there is to be done in Spain. There's also lots of queuing, but that's fine, you can queue in English, nobody minds, it's when you get to the desk the fun starts.
I am lucky; I work in a completely Spanish speaking environment and have Spanish friends and husband and live in a city where the grasp of English is not particularly strong. I have been forced to speak Spanish the majority of the time. This has meant that within a year I have been able to become passably fluent which alleviates some of the mardiness to which I am prone when thwarted in any way. I still have those moments of total impotence but they come with less humiliating frequency than before. I still struggle when talking about some of the deeper things in life but then I sometimes struggle to find words to express some of the things that I feel. Some things leave me speechless with rage regardless of language. Words are ultimately clumsy and often inadequate.
There is an enormous sense of achievement when someone looks at you and says 'wow, you have improved so much, you can hardly tell you're foreign sometimes'. They are probably being kind and encouraging but it is genuine enough.
So we come full circle to the 'identity crisis' I mentioned at the beginning. You find yourself wondering who exactly you are. You aren't who you normally are because you can't convey that person; there is no way to make her known to the world. You are just some (slightly mad) English girl in Spain with an amusing tendency to get caught dancing to her iPod in lifts, a stranger in a strange land. You can't be witty, or clever, or even express your frustration. Which is...well...frustrating!
As I mention, it has left me rebellious, wanting to kick out against the things that I see as holding me back, stopping me from being me, whoever that is. It has prompted me to re-examine myself, work out what is important to me, the kind of person I want to be, the things I am actually interested in and precisely what I want to get out of life. I have rediscovered my passion for some things; things that are really important to me. I am setting out on a metaphorical road to find out more, to learn, to actually feel and fight rather than stolidly accept. So actually, it isn't an identity crisis at all; it's more an identity redefinition or rediscovery. Ah. It's a good thing!
I still have moments of darkness and frustration when I cannot express myself as I would like to but I have just discovered a song with this line in it which I actually think makes a great point:
'Even as we speak we kill the mystique' – I'm Making Eyes at You, Black Kids.
