A diary entry that I wrote on March 7 reads, “As mundane as my life is in the States, there’s consistency, there’s predictability, there’s a plan, there’s a knowing of what will come tomorrow. This doesn’t exist in France.” I wrote this in a cafe not too far from Place de Hotel de Ville in Aix-en-Provence, a feeling of deep sadness encroached on me as I realized how uncomfortable I was with unfamiliarity.
Before I left for France to study abroad, I romanticized the unknown and dreamed of spontaneity. I’ll sit in a cafe in Cours Mirabeau and journal my heart away, I thought. I’ll be Hemingway and Baldwin in my own right and get inspired to write, I thought. I’ll immerse myself in the French language at my French university and maybe I’ll meet some friends, I thought. Maybe for a weekend I’ll jet off to Paris and spend a night kissing a stranger on Pont Alexandre and dance next to the Seine.
I had this vision, this dense rose-colored vision of what was to come. My naivety saved me from the anxiety of going abroad, but it made the adjustment harder. The language barrier is what mentally paralyzed me the most. At best, I spoke French at a fourth grade level, and although I understood the language well enough to keep up with my classes and reading, the spoken element always proved to be the most important to the French. Language is power — it’s a vessel that communicates a person’s character and disposition. My humor, my personality, and my shrewdness are all enveloped in English, and yet all of it gets lost in French. I once explained this feeling to my program director, telling her, “Je suis une fille en Anglais et Je suis une autre fille en Francais,” which translates to, “I’m one girl in English and I’m another girl in French.” In French, I’m unintelligent, inarticulate, shy, and passive. The valor in me is lost. I realized that this version of me that I envisioned before I went abroad may have only been possible in English. In French, I’m essentially a 9-year-old trapped inside a 21-year-old woman’s body. The French women here live with ease while I act with prudence.
I’m one girl in English and I’m another girl in French.
The version of me that exists in the States ceases to exist in France, and with that knowledge I started to spiral into this depressive episode that lasted for weeks. I replaced meals with cappuccinos, I drank cheap wine from the convenience store down the street, I skipped showers and would go a week without clean underwear, I would cry until my chest started to hurt and my ears started to ring. There was a day in the middle of February where I looked at myself in the mirror — there she was, Swarna Gowtham, going commando in jeans with puffy eyes and a hungover smile. Quelle vie.
Was I without extreme lows in the U.S.? No, I was not. In fact, depression is something I have struggled with since I was in high school. Yet this inability to immerse myself with the French plagued my spirits in such a horrible way. Immersion into another language and culture is indeed one of the hardest tasks a person can undertake. The loneliness you experience from being a foreign country is something you start to take personally. I started to feel like nobody cared for who I was and what I had to say, because who I am is an American and what I had to say was of no use if it could not be said in tactful, clever, and colloquial French. I grew sympathy for everyone else who might have experienced this — immigrants, expats, tourists, and international students at my university.
Jhumpa Lahiri, a South-Asian American writer I admire, faced similar plights in her journey with Italian. It must be said that her approach to Italian is more graceful and patient than my approach to French, but reading about her tribulations gave me solace. In her book In Other Words, she gives a humorous analogy to how she views Italian and English. She writes, “I want to protect my Italian, which I hold in my arms like a newborn. I want to coddle it. It has to sleep, eat, and grow. Compared with Italian, my English is like a hairy, smelly teenager. Go away, I want to say to it.” While Lahiri views her two languages, the familiar and the foreign, as her children, I unfortunately view mine as men. English is a childhood best friend; I understand him and he understands me. I went to school with him, I write with him, I work with him, and I sing with him. I understand his phrases and his slang, and he thinks I’m funny and confident and complex.
But then across the bar is French — he’s sexy, smoldering, and mysterious. I approach him and say hi, and he takes an interest in me and shows me his music, his movies, and his books. I barely understand any of it or any of him, but I like him and I think he likes me, so I try. I try and I try, and some days he comes to me easily and other days I’m tongue tied with him. He makes me feel juvenile and inexperienced. Sometimes, I hate him. My view of him is so volatile at times, I wish I never approached or liked him — yet he still has my heart.
I am no linguist nor am I a polyglot — I’m merely a girl with ambition and curiosity.
I’m currently sitting in the same cafe near Place de Hotel de Ville where I sat a few weeks ago, writing about my anxiety with living in France and adjusting to speaking its beautiful and complicated language. I now sit here feeling a little better about my time here and my relationship with French. My qualms with French are the result of me romanticizing being in a new country and immersing myself in a foreign language. I had to recognize that I am no linguist nor am I a polyglot — I’m merely a girl with ambition and curiosity. Clumsiness, mistakes, and the lack of complete fluency don’t make me less than human, they make me see my humanity. I am still a learner of French, not a speaker — not yet. I just have to give myself time.