having an expressive-receptive language disorder is so infuriating in this world it's like. i understand the language of bodies and faces and eyes, of music, of shape and color and art and motion, of the wind and the world and the stars. i can understand the information you're telling me but not from you and your words. my mother tongue is the way the sound of a table being set echoes around the room and fills the space, the only tongue we all share, when it was meant to be the most spoken language in the world. i am so smart in my mother tongue but you cannot speak it well, and i have learned that i need to be the one to speak yours or i lose my chance to live, so i love words intimately from my years spending hours learning each one; i am a linguist who cannot read or write. i hate words as they are the tool wielded against me, the invention of the majority that i cannot use, but words are my lovers, they've become my dearest companions that very few people will have the same relationship with. in order to have someone know that i cannot use their mother tongue, i must speak their mother tongue. the more i use theirs the more i lose mine, but mine is what made me fall in love with living and to live i must use theirs, and even when necessary i cannot cannot cannot unless i use up all my energy for it and then continue to overdraw. and despite it all i love your mother tongue, because in spoken language i am easily able to understand my human friends, i can read them as i've learned over years years years YEARS how their language presents itself in mine. but should i try to come up with a way to show my experiences, i must speak in your tongue, and unlike the bank i know to draw from with my friends, the words are not there. so i simply read my mother tongue whenever i can, watching the light pass along the walls and falling in love with the way the wheels move along the train tracks in a way i can't share the way my loved ones can with me. why must i speak when everything is written out in front of you already. why must i speak your tongue when you won't speak mine. everything i say will be a shadow of what i mean.
