Will I Ever Feel Whole?

Finding belonging between languages and versions of myself

There are days when I walk through this city and feel like a guest in my own life.
The language bends around me like glass — clear, hard, impenetrable.
I smile, I nod, I rehearse the same polite sentences I’ve practiced for years,
and still, the words feel borrowed.
I can ask for what I need, but not always say who I am.

They tell me, “Why don’t you just learn German?”
as if language were a bridge I could build alone.
I’ve taken courses. I’ve repeated words until my tongue felt foreign in my own mouth.
But it’s not about grammar or vocabulary.
It’s about walking into rooms and realizing that understanding
isn’t the same as belonging.

I used to think wholeness was something I could earn —
through effort, good manners, or the right words.
Now I know it’s more like a quiet knowing,
the kind that comes when you stop asking for permission to exist.

Here, I am both seen and unseen.
Too much in one moment, invisible in the next.
I live between languages, between versions of myself —
the one who knows exactly who she is,
and the one who must explain it again.

But maybe this in-between is not a loss.
Maybe it’s where I’ve been becoming.

Because in every misunderstood word, every unfinished sentence,
I am learning a new kind of fluency —
the kind that has nothing to do with sound,
and everything to do with truth.

So, will I ever feel whole?
Perhaps not in the way I once imagined.
But I am here.
And maybe, for now, that’s enough.

Maybe wholeness isn’t a destination after all — maybe it’s the soft space between who I was and who I’m still becoming. The quiet acceptance that even when the words don’t fit, I still belong to myself. I may never speak every language around me, but I am fluent in my own becoming. And for now, that feels like enough.