here's part: so much of my personality and confidence and sense of self is bounded up in words. i feel smart only when i can talk smart, when i can explain what i'm thinking, use all my big words and know that i've used them correctly. most of my friendships are built on witty banter and the specific language of inside jokes. i'm crippled here without that, unable to say what i want to say and never just how i want to say it. i feel half helpless, disadvantaged, i don't make eye contact, i walk straight and i keep my face down. in part its also that my blueeyed beauty pales beside the easy grace of the women here, that i feel out of place because i am out of place, and somehow i seem to have lost the great billowing confidence that held me up for the past five years. it's been a long time since i had difficulty learning something, with the single exception of the astrophysics class i shouldn't have been taking anyway. it's frustrating more than i can say to search for a word, or a phrase, or a conjugation, and find nothing in my mind but a blankness - and not even a vague static, but a screaming void of futility.


it's better than this, i promise. this is all the frustration because i can't say any of it in spanish and wouldn't have anyone to tell it to if i could.