Living in A Second Language: Guest Post
The following is a guest post written by Nicole Miller of Living in A Second Language. She’s my American born friend currently living in France. We hope she’ll join us here at Sharing Circle when she can. Let her know your thoughts!
The After
Living in a second language and a foreign culture is an endless approximation. A mathematical formula I can’t quite get right, despite years of trying. I have navigated, negotiated, and narrated my life through the structured flow chart of French, la forme, for the past 11 years. Le fond, the depth – the guts – all of that remains American.
The good news is, on a daily basis, I fit in. I am not identified on the street as American and my accent is rarely heard. The bad (or is it?) news is, I am still foreign here, other. There are moments, both for them and for me, when it is clear, on the surface at least, that we simply cannot understand each other, despite accurate syntax and appropriate vocabulary.
Believe me, I realize how privileged I am – mind meanderings of this variety are a luxury. I do not struggle for material survival and I have the time to wonder when I will achieve that état d’âme – that soul state where friction does not exist. A place, underneath it all where the shadows are, where we all speak the same language and where cultural differences are just dust on the mirror we use to see ourselves.
When I first arrived in France, I thought I had come home. Or at least that I had found the place where I would make my home. And I suppose I have, to a certain extent. But the longer I live here the less at home I feel, and the same is true when I return to the United States. When you live out of a database of duality for too long, this is what happens, no “where” is home for you. The freedom you feel when you live in a place where the rules do not apply to you, where you observe them and nearly always follow them but are never really touched by them, is replaced by the restriction you feel when you realize you will not leave an imprint there, only a mark where you’ve brushed up against its surface.
I like to believe, choose to believe, that there is an “after” to all of this. An after where everywhere is home instead of nowhere. An after where we will see that in the traces we will have left on each other, this country I call home for now and I, there lies a truth. An after where the shadow lines are smudged with the hot ash of dedication, mine and hers, because our relationship requires nothing if not dedication, a soulful dedication to the truth, no matter what. A truth only to be found in that place where yielding meets resistance and wins, hands down, every time. Where giving up actually means getting and the cold hard truth is actually a soft whisper. I look forward to an after where those sharp shadow lines that have defined us and divided us will be cut clean through by grace. A grace purer than language and more powerful than culture. A grace, painful at first, that cuts through the lines I thought I would follow, the road map I have drawn in my soul, the me that I think I am, outlined by linguistics and homeland. An after where I am left wounded and mapless, for a time. But I believe that when I look closely to assess the damage, to see how badly I am bleeding, I will only see a clean cut through lines I don’t need and honeyed traces of that painful, beautiful grace where I was certain blood would be. And in that trace, I’ll find my freedom. Freedom from and freedom to.
Thanks for sharing, Nicole. Any other ex-Americans care to compare and contrast their experience with hers?
