Why do I write in English rather than my mother tongue?

I often wondered why I found myself writing in English, not just writing but also thinking, expressing my very self in a language that I wasn’t born speaking, for however short that time frame was. In fact I certainly did attend an international school from kindergarten up to elementary school, but I don’t necessarily attribute this as the reason of it.

I absorbed a language I always felt like home.

It was my home, it was the moment I escaped the physical one to immerge myself in the safety of a place in which I loved to learn.

English is such a wonderfully simple language, no wonders it’s grown to become the vehicular language (colonisation matters apart).

I guess I have developed my safe place on the tongues of billions of people.

I don’t write in Italian or do I even speak in Italian when it comes to expressing what I feel or how I’m processing it. I don’t really see my mother tongue as the cradle of my being.

I have learnt to get the farthest possible from what I write in the intent of not recognising that those words are mine. I’ve grown this defence mechanism that shields me from coming to terms that that struggle is all mine and mine only.

It’s hard as it can get to write your thoughts in the tongue people know you with.

I came across a piece of text in English, beautifully written but what anguish, hurt and sad can this one who wrote it be. I guess it isn’t me though. I’m Italian and my mother tongue would never accept that, what this feels.

How strange can it get?

Just when you thought you were getting on with your craft you find out it has all been a deceit. A deceit you, I, played on yourself, me, whose words are being lain down.

What great master of deceits must I be. I did really just make a big fool of myself with my writing.

Not because of the writing itself, but because I have never acknowledged that the reason I write in English is a desperate run to detach myself from my feelings.

I feel, I write, I communicate, I process, I feel again. I communicate before processing. This all happens in myself. I write what I feel, when it’s written it’s done. I process and then feel again and that’s a weird cycle that repeats over and over again in the fresh mind of a young writing lover.

I’m speaking in riddles, just because my mind is a riddle in itself, one that I might not ever master. One that has mastered itself over and over again, an infinite cycle, a wormhole … just because I love references.

I express myself in English, for many have done this before. Nothing special about it, just minds that evolve.

For I wish all of them well, I wish for them the discovery of that mocking. I greet the mockery and I greet my forever home.

Was all of this rambling or a step into that abyss, all I know it was, is that I will never learn to leave those tongues.