I’ve spent the last four weeks trying to slow down my speech, hand-select the words I’m going to say, and find alternative ways to phrase how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking.
Being a woman of many (written) words, it’s been a hard task for me to continuously sift through my thoughts and match the simplest, straightforward terms to use to convey what I want to say. I thrive off of knowing that the entirety of the English language is available to me, and I embrace using as many words as I need to adequately describe an emotion, a situation, a person, etc. I can remember times when I was young, and someone would use a “big” word or a less common term. I have clear memories of people laughing or poking fun at that particular person for using said term/phrase because it was “extensive” or uncommon, yet I never understood why it was seen as weird.
“But that word exists. It’s available for use. Why wouldn’t they use it?” is what I thought.
In those moments, I promised myself to never let someone else’s ridicule or lack of exploration with diction be the reason I held back what I truly wanted to say. I never wanted to water down my thoughts just so they settled swimmingly into the elementary ideologies of someone else. Why should I reserve what’s weighing on my mind because you can’t expand your mindset?
I gave myself permission at a very impressionable age to choose my mind over their mindset.
“You might be seen as ‘weird’ for this choice, but remember that this choice feels ‘right’.”
I have tried my dang hardest to side with that choice over the years.
Yet today, I sit here and voice the struggle I’ve been facing for over a month now.
If you read my last blog “Taylor in Bellano”, you know that I’ve been seeing an Italian man since pretty much the first day I arrived in Lake Como, Italy. We have seen each other everyday for over two weeks. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time together, and even when we aren’t physically with one another, we spend time conversing via text message.
This man is in the midst of learning English, which is a nice way for me to say, he’s not fluent and conversation with him has been challenging at times.
We are usually always able to get our points across and communicate how we feel, but there’s no denying that there’s a lot of mental concentration that plays a factor in our everyday discussions.
His efforts are very clear and top of mind in this situation. It’s evident that it’s a lot harder for him to understand me, intensively listen, and then find the words he wants to use to express his thoughts. I’m constantly correcting his verb choices, his syntax, and his pronunciation. I want him to learn as much as he can from me, and I’d rather he hear the corrections from me than struggle in conversation down the road with someone else.
However, I’m not a very… how can I put this… literal person. I mean, I am in many instances, but I’m also constantly finding the double meaning in life. I love finding parallels between mainstream concepts and intellectual theory. This entire blog is dedicated to wisdom and truth and perspective from less-obvious points of view. More than that though, I don’t blog just to blog. I think about these concepts every minute of every day. I created a blog so that these ideas didn’t just have to sit in my head. I wanted them to reach other people and be given life outside of me.
So, what I’m trying to say is, my love for words and explanation of complex thought is not just a hobby. It’s who I am. It’s what I love most.
And furthermore, having to revert to simple language and carefully-crafted sentences has been difficult for me, too.
I find myself thinking, “be patient”, over and over again because I know it’s hard to learn a new language and speak with someone else in their mother tongue. I know it’s daunting to try to pronounce words that don’t easily fit in your mouth and to try to express your thoughts when your vocabulary is rather limited. But my frustration doesn’t lie within someone else’s ability to speak my language. I commend that through and through.
My frustration lies within my inability to freely speak my mind. To say exactly what I want. To use every word that I have spent so much of my life falling madly in love with.
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The last four weeks of my life have felt like a movie. I have met people I will remember forever, been apart of cultural experiences that no tourist is afforded, gone to places that have taken my breath away, and have thoroughly enjoyed the moments when I have simply sat on my porch, by myself, merely existing.
I have simultaneously been dealing with issues over the last month that I’ve never experienced in the past.
Before coming to Italy, I never had a problem properly breathing. Then I got diagnosed with asthma and spent countless days and nights struggling to fill my lungs with what my body depends on.
Before coming to Italy, I never had a problem sleeping. Maybe here and there every once in a while, but normally, I sleep right through the night and don’t have problems with falling asleep. Here, I have battled insomnia for four weeks and counting. It has made it difficult to be present, to stay alert, to go out and be social, to even just do work.
Before coming to Italy, I had the luxury of communicating with anyone I came into contact with and didn’t have to think twice about if they spoke my language or understood what I was saying. Here, I have to ask if people speak English before conversing with them, and many times, they don’t. Likewise, if they do, I still have to carefully choose what I’m going to say because slang and idioms and double meanings (things I use ALL the time at home) aren’t as commonly understood here; therefore, choosing simpler language is a safer bet if I want to be understood.
And although this entire post may seem like one big complaint, I want to state that my intentions aren’t to throw myself a pity party. My intentions in writing any of this is to state the following:
I did not realize how precious it is to live in abundance.
Everything I have been struggling with over the course of the last four weeks has, at the same time, given me reason to carve out a new perspective on how I interact with what simply keeps me alive.
In other words, you don’t know how good it feels to breathe with ease until you can’t take a full, deep breath.
You don’t know how good it feels to sleep uninterrupted until you spend thirty days lying awake at night staring at your ceiling.
You don’t know how good it feels to say whatever the fuck you want until you’re forced to narrow your vocabulary down to just a short list of words.
I have a newfound appreciation for so much— especially this blog. I started it back in October 2020, and I remember being SO nervous to share my first few posts because I was showing up in a way I had never shown up before— raw, real, unfiltered, and mighty fucking wordy.
But today, I realize how incredibly grateful I am to have the freedom of saying exactly what’s on my mind. I think about how scared I was to begin this blog, and now, it’s my sanctuary, my safe haven.
Although I have been itching to write more blog posts for you (and me), I’ve been busy teaching English lessons to my incredibly sweet and thoughtful Italian man. It has opened my eyes to how much I love this art form and how blessed I am to not only claim it as my gift but to also share it with people who either know only a few words in English or who know many more words than I do.
While I do my best to teach him as thoroughly and robustly as I can, I will continue to show up and write for the people who were once poked fun at for using certain words, who had to navigate the difficulties of learning a new language, and who, for any reason, didn’t have the liberty of saying what they really wanted to say.
The act of writing is something I find freeing, but the way words bring us together is what I’m truly in love with.
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