I Remembered Myself in Spanish

There are things I can say in English

that I cannot feel.

And there are things I feel in Spanish

that refuse to be translated.

For a long time, I thought fluency meant mastery.

I thought the more precise my English became,

the more powerful my voice would be.

I learned early.

Through television, through school, through survival.

I learned how to articulate ideas,

how to structure thoughts,

how to be understood.

And I was.

But somewhere along the way,

understanding replaced resonance.

In English, I could explain everything.

But I could not always feel it.

There is a difference.

English is efficient.

It moves quickly.

It names things, categorizes them, organizes them into meaning.

Spanish lingers.

Spanish doesn’t just say.

It holds.

In English, you might say:

“whatchamacallit?”

In Spanish, it becomes something else entirely:

¿Cómo se llamaba aquello…?

That thing…

that had a shape,

a memory,

a feeling attached to it.

The question itself becomes a search,

not just for the word,

but for the experience of it.

That is where I found myself again.

Not in translation.

In return.

Because translation, I realized,

is often a negotiation.

A trimming.

A softening of edges so something can fit into another structure.

But some parts of us were never meant to fit.

They were meant to be felt in their original form.

There are phrases in Spanish

that carry generations inside them.

They move slower,

and breathe differently.

They don’t rush to be understood.

In English we say, “I’m an American.”

In Puerto Rico we say,

“Soy hija del sol, mar y arena, de las flores y del coquí.”

And I come from all of that.

From a language that romances life.

That stretches time.

That lets meaning arrive instead of forcing it.

So what happens

when you build a life in a language

that moves faster than your soul?

You adapt.

You perform.

You learn to speak in ways that make sense to others,

even if something inside you goes quiet.

Not silent.

Just quieter.

And then one day,

without trying,

you return.

Maybe it’s a memory.

Maybe it’s a sentence you write.

Maybe it’s the way a word lands in your body,

and suddenly it feels like home.

That’s what happened to me.

I didn’t decide to go back to Spanish.

I felt my way back.

And when I did,

I realized something I hadn’t been able to name before:

My voice was never lost.

It was just waiting

in the language that knew how to hold it.

Now, I don’t choose between them.

I don’t have to.

English carries my structure.

Spanish carries my soul.

And somewhere in between,

I have learned to listen again.

Not for what sounds right,

but for what feels true.

Because voice

is not just what we say.

It is how we recognize ourselves

in how we choose to live.

And some parts of us

will always remain,

mejor sentidas que explicadas.

Better felt than explained.

Next

Previous