It does not get easier
A letter from now me to past me, which past me will never receive, only earn.
You think, the you of a year ago, that it will get easier. That the foreign forms just now beginning to coalesce into sounds and words and meanings will become less foreign, blend in among the other packets of attention you so rarely notice the joins between.
And in a way, it will get easier. You will learn what words mean, and embarrass yourself much less often than you imagine (and mercifully, mostly in front of colleagues, not clients). Your ability to remember and use new words will surprise you. You will take unexpected delight in understanding colleagues, newspapers, podcasts, even (eventually) entire books. The joy will feed itself, and you will want more, and so you will do more, read more, try more.
But even when you have learned more, much more, it won’t be enough. Because for every noun, verb, adverb, and word order you no longer have to think actively about, there is always something else to spend that effort on. And spend it you must, on longer, more complicated sentences that you don’t have to plan in advance. On being funny. On finding your way back to the you that you were before a new country took away your words.
And so you will, around a year after taking to a pretty much full-time Norwegian working day, still reach every Friday evening a thin porridge of your Monday-morning self, unable to say anything much at all without making what on a Monday would count as stupid mistakes and poor pronunciation. So stappfull after a week of trying that the only thing you can do is to listen to music without lyrics – this after you have started and stopped two different audiobooks and a podcast episode you really, really wanted to hear. It’s just too much, these words, any words.
That this happens is perhaps not because you are struggling with the language, but because you are not struggling with the language. It’s impossible not to overreach, because even though your comprehension and ability to express yourself are improving, you still want to go faster. You have to: there is so much to do and say, so much complexity to communicate and respond to, so much precision to regain.
And sometimes now, the beautiful, unconscious spaces between being overtly, clunkily aware of speaking another language, those periods of flight, last north of an hour. So you fly, as far and often as you can.
It’s so tiring, flying. But you have to, because you are up in the air, and everyone else is flying too, perhaps a little faster than you, but you can just about keep up if you really try, maybe. Until suddenly you can’t, and you land, inelegantly. Cringing at the mess you just made, with words and sounds you are ashamed of, are sure you should be able to do better than.
You’re done for today. Go to sleep and try again tomorrow. Maybe eventually it will be easier than this.
