I was about to turn ten when my parents packed up three little girls and five suitcases and moved across the ocean to an unknown land with an unknown language. That bold and scary choice turned out to be one of the greatest gifts they've ever given me. People are often surprised to hear that English isn't my first language given my fluency and lack of accent, but I still remember the other kids in my fourth-grade class trying to mime words like "elevator" and "candle" to help me understand what they were saying.
Nowadays, it feels like Polish is my second language. While I feel completely at ease and confident when speaking English, Polish makes me feel clunky, awkward and young. It also doesn't help that I have a slight speech impediment that makes it difficult to correctly pronounce any Polish words that have an "R" in them. Part of me is embarrassed to speak it because the attempted pronunciation back from anybody trying to learn the word from me always highlights my own flaw. The particular experience could also be a function of me not having a vocabulary that extends past a middle schooler's level or because my emotional growth all happened in English. I understand my world through my emotions, and the words for emotions in Polish—the expressions for my internal feelings—feel like cotton balls in my mouth: foreign and awkward, if they come at all. And yet, I delight in speaking it with other people, especially now that it is so rare.
In Vancouver, where I live now, there isn't much Polish culture around. This is a sharp contrast to my experience living in Mississauga during the second decade of my life with my family. During this time, we didn't have a swear jar at home but an "English jar"— my mother’s creative attempt to keep all three of us girls speaking and maintaining the language. Polish was everywhere in Mississauga. You could live your entire life there without learning English. There were dozens of Polish stores, banks, libraries, theatres, and more. Overhearing a Polish conversation on the streets was commonplace. Here in Vancouver, there is only one real Polish store, and it's far away. I don't hear Polish on the street. Even my own home is no longer scattered with Polish magazines or papers. I can feel myself getting rusty every time I speak to my mom, searching for words in my own mind. That's why I read Julia Quinn and visit the Polish section of the Vancouver Public Library religiously. There is so much of me only accessible through this language. I don't want to lose this part of me no matter how clunky and awkward she might be because.
Anyone who speaks another language is familiar with the challenge of trying to translate a specific word and not being able to articulate the exact feeling that it carries. Now, imagine that difficulty extended to entire experiences. It’s how it feels like to be me at times. Speaking Polish with someone opens up a part of me that is hard to communicate through words alone: the music I listen to, the books I've read, the movies I've watched, the experiences I've had. They're all steeped in context—not only linguistic but also historical and social. I can translate the words, but the essence is just not there. Just as you can't truly know the culture of a place without really knowing its language, people in my life who don't speak both Polish and English cannot fully know me. That is the space occupied by immigrant children. I remember Poland, but it is not home; Canada is home. Yet many of my memories, experiences, and mannerisms are influenced by Polish culture and language. I crave to be understood, but my perspective is complex and multilayered. I understand why people gravitate toward those who share their culture and why many of my Polish friends have Polish partners. In many ways, it's easier, but I personally enjoy the challenge and creativity of sharing the more difficult-to-express parts of myself and learning theirs in return.
Will there ever be a person who understands me fully and wholly? Maybe not, and that is a grief I hold. Do I even understand myself fully? Perhaps not. Maybe that's the real issue here, isn't it? Who am I to myself such that I can share it with others and help them understand me? It all goes back to relationships—other people acting as mirrors for us to see ourselves. Identity is not a simple box but a mosaic of pieces we cobble together throughout our lives as reflected to us through other people.
This experience is not unique to me. My identity is shaped by fragments from different countries, languages, landscapes, and people, but each of us has parts of ourselves that don't fit neatly into a single cohesive story. Whether it's how we grew up or the life paths we've chosen, we cannot be simplified or flattened—for better or for worse—and I, for one, like it that way.
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