Soul Language

Soul Language

She stared at the pages, from a distance.

It was a feeling like no other in the world. She could not grasp it, could not name it. It was not satisfaction, and neither was it disappointment. It was no peace of mind as much as it was not anxiety. Over the last weeks, she managed to push it from her mind, but mostly it lurked in the back of all her thoughts, waiting for the right moment to overwhelm her. Maybe this was the feeling that followed her around from the moment she woke up until the moment she fell asleep: being overwhelmed. 

Already as a little girl she only had one goal in her life: to write a book, at some point. She loved to read, sometimes five books at once. She did not need bookmarks to remember the pages she was on. She read and read and read and absorbed and decided she wanted to be an author. She wanted to give other people stories to get lost in, she wanted other people to feel as captured by a book as she always did.

And then she grew older and life got in the way. While she always found time to squeeze in some drafts here and now, she was distracted by school, and of course by puberty. Would she ever even amount to anything? Would her writing even be liked? Would she herself be liked? What if someone made fun of her stories? Were her stories even good? No one would want to publish them anyway, right? She was just the weirdo at class, not drinking, not smoking, not partying, not getting boyfriends or girlfriends: she read and she liked nerdy stuff and that was enough to never really belong, to never really fit in. She escaped into fanfiction about stories she read and series and movies she watched. She liked spinning new story lines for characters she loved, for characters closer to her heart than some of her friends. She loved the creativity of it, she was good at it – but it also distracted her from her very own stories. From the stories deep from within.

Years passed and again, life always seemed to get in the way. She started university and she decided to continue studying the foreign language she loved so much at school. Her mother tongue had never been enough to experience what was out there. She needed more words, more ways to express what she was feeling and experiencing. She needed to recreate herself, quite literally. She moved abroad, immersed herself more and more in this foreign language that grew so close to her heart. She found herself again, she could feel it even when she was not fluent, even when she recognized every single mistake she made when she talked to new friends, when she wrote academic papers, when she sent text messages a moment too early. She loved this language regardless. She felt more at home in these sometimes-unfamiliar words, in the grammar she never felt like she grasped entirely, the language that continued to hold so many secrets. Occasionally, she would be frustrated, because she had all these feelings inside of her that she knew she could express, but her brain and her mouth and her tongue would not obey. Sometimes she was frustrated because she would never be one of the native speakers; frustrated because she would never be able to use the language the way they could, because she would always never really belong, because she would never really master the language she loved more than her mother tongue, the language that felt most like… her.

And then the old childhood desire crept up on her, almost out of nowhere (almost). You could write a book. How long do you want to wait? It was a burning desire, actually, she felt the need to write, the need to publish a story that mattered, a story that would make her feel like she could achieve whatever she set her mind to. She wanted to prove it to herself, prove that she was capable. And thus she tried. She drafted, she edited, she wrote, but it was never good enough, she felt that she was not good enough, that she kept on failing at something no one but herself pressured her to do.

For a long time she knew the problem, but dared not admit it to herself, for there was no solution: she could not write in her mother tongue, no matter how many words she knew, no matter how many ways she found to express what she was feeling, what she wanted others to feel. It was not her language.

But how to write in her language? She barely made it through a conversation without messing up somewhere in the sentence – though everyone laughed at her when she herself pointed out her mistakes. No one even hears them, they assured her. But it did not matter, because she heard them. She knew that no matter how hard she tried, she would never find the right synonyms or antonyms, even if her life depended on it. She would not find the right proverb, the right phrase, the right expression. She relied on what she knew, she never dared to venture too far from familiar words and phrases, she did not want to embarrass herself in front of other people and even less so in front of herself. While she often doubted whether the words and phrases she used were correct, she always knew for certain when they were wrong.

Still, there was this desire. And eventually she grew old enough to cut herself some slack. If she failed, no one would know, no one would judge. She herself was her fiercest critic and she could simply shut down all negative thoughts. So what if she used the same words over and over again? So what if the grammar was not on point? No one would know, and she would try not to care (too much). 

And so she wrote. And wrote. And wrote. 

It was not the most original story, it was not the next bestseller, she decided to (maybe) never show it to anyone. But the story came from within and it was more alive because it was the language she loved, the language that made her feel most like herself. The words she wrote were true and they were genuine, and they were everything she wanted them to be. She did not care if others would like them, she did not need anyone’s approval to be proud of her work. She needed to be proud of herself. She needed no one’s validation but her own.

And now she stared at the pages, from a distance.

There were only two words missing, two very simple words in a language that still made her question all her language abilities, all her (assumed) cleverness, all her self-esteem. And she pushed the two words very far away, because what if she typed them out? What would happen after? How would she feel? Would her world change? Would the moment pass without any emotion, any feeling? Would she eventually share this milestone with anyone, would she eventually even share the story itself? 

But finally, finally, she sat down in front of the computer, put her fingers to the keyboard and typed. She would find out the answers to her questions within seconds, if only she was brave enough. And she was brave enough. She could do it. 

It was no masterpiece, not what she had in mind when she was a little girl. It was not at all the story she imagined it to be. It was not a story that would thrill and compel and be loved and would eventually make it to the movies, would make her rich and admired (and hated). But it did not need to be. It did not have to be perfect to be perfect, it just needed to be. And it was.

She stared at the two words in a language so different to her own, but so much closer to her heart. She started at the two words that calmed her soul.

The end.