Juggling with words

- The French woman in me -

My boyfriend and I live in a tiny Parisian apartment filled with books, high up into the little nooks of our ceilings. They aren't mine; they belong to him who has read them all. My humble collection still houses at my parents place, since all of our walls are already filled. Most of his novels are written by authors I have never heard off and have trouble with the pronunciation of their last names. I love the smell that the books bring to our home, it reminds me of going to the local library when I was young. Recently we have taken on the challenge of putting the entire collection in alphabetical order. The authentic wooden floors of our midget apartment were filled with books during a 2 day period while we struggled with the pages and pages filled with words and letters.

The French have a very rich literary heritage, and they carry around a book all day the same way they carry around their wallet. They read everywhere and anywhere, on the metro, in the street, on the toilet. Everybody has a wide knowledge off the written word and take it as a necessity to have read all the French literary classics. Unfortunately I stand in great contrast to that vision, I read fashion magazines from cover to cover and weep with Danielle Steel novels and books by the name of Bergdorf Blondes and Last night at Chateau Marmont. The French are great with words, and I guess their reading culture has got something to do with it.

My boyfriend too, he is great with words, French words that are. To me he is a great master of the French language and I often have a hard time following his opinions and thoughts. I have to admit that I sometimes nod even though I didn't understand a single word of what he was saying. My knowledge of the French language has evolved and I can carry on a conversation, but sometimes it just goes to fast for me and the cultural difference gets to prominent. Jokes for that matter are a great example. Cracking jokes in a language other than your mother tongue seems so unnatural and when people start laughing at the table and you are the only silent person there, your senses tell you that you have just missed out on a joke. Getting angry is worse, in the mist of your boiling point; it is extremely hard to come up with the right words to say at the moment you should say them. They always seem to dawn on me to late, when my angriness has been blown off by steam trough my ears.

 I always feel like a different person in a different language. And although 99% of what you say isn’t coming out of your mouth, I cannot help but feel inadequate when I don't seem to come up with the right words to say. Reading should help, but I have a hard time keeping concentrated on French books. The spoken and written language are so different from one another that I feel lost when I enter chapter 2 of any French written novel. I don't seem to have that struggle when entering the entertainment of an English written book. The language comes more natural to me and I seem to wander through English novels with the same ease as wandering through a department store while shopping for shoes.

But, throughout the years and while living abroad, I have come to embrace the woman I am in French, English and Flemish, hoping that my true self shines through regardless of the words that come out of my mouth.