Using English, my native language, stops when I land in Rome. It ceases to exist as a tool which can create spontaneous exchanges, which reflect MY history or MY psychological space. At the airport, my tongue is cut. I BECOME another person. It's like having a graft on my soul- on my very existence - new branch coming out of my trunk.
It is a very different experience traveling or living in Italy with a husband or companion with whom we share our native language OR living here with a husband with whom we share TWO languages. With my husband of 39 years, we share only one language: Italian...and therefore only one culture. My English, and ALL that a language represents, no longer has a voice - it withdraws into a silent inner life where I try to maintain a semblance of my former existence.
I am truncated - suddenly - knowing that the other me, the former me, the "who I was" goes underground. There is no common cultural pool with my husband of the things which matured me into who I am or of the trivial things which dot my memories of growing up.
My married life without English has prompted acute observation, a silent inner life. English has remained my language for reflecting, analyzing, reminiscing, dreaming...but has had no practical outlet. It has not been the language I could use.
Are there any/many of you who have had/have similar experiences? I have spent these 39 years in Umbria, not in international Perugia, or in Rome or Florence... but in Foligno, where I never was in any expat community, had no English speaking friends and not one extended family member with whom I could ever speak in English.
More and more I reflect on this, asking myself the ramifications of this on ME, on my identity. Identity is another topic of the implications of having a graft on my soul and the ensuing confusion of a grafted tree. Maybe I can open some musings on that topic soon.
Hope to hear from some of you who have had similar situations.
Mary
