It happened on a Tuesday. Which feels about right. Nothing dramatic ever happens on a Tuesday. Just small shifts that rearrange you quietly.
I woke up annoyed.
Not coffee-annoyed. Proper annoyed. In the dream I had been arguing with someone. I cannot remember who. But I remember the language.
It was English.
Precise. Efficient. Every sentence lined up. The version of me that knows exactly how to win.
Later that morning I dropped a jar of olives on the kitchen tiles and muttered an apology in French. Not to anyone in particular. Just generally. To the olives. To gravity. To the fact that I am, apparently, incapable of holding glass objects before 10am.
By lunchtime, when the plumber sent his third “ahora voy” message, my internal monologue had switched to Spanish. Not angry Spanish. Just resigned Spanish. The kind that accepts that time here is elastic.
That was the moment it clicked.
I do not just speak three languages. I rotate through three slightly different people.
English-me is direct. She writes emails quickly. She says no without wrapping it in velvet. She stands straighter.
French-me is softer. She edits herself mid-sentence. She sighs before disagreeing. She apologises even when she is right.
Spanish-me shrugs more. She allows for uncertainty. She says “ya veremos” and actually means it. She is less obsessed with controlling outcomes.
Somewhere between those three is the person who lives here now. The version of me who buys bread in Spanish, texts friends in French, and drafts long reflective posts in English because it feels like home base.
A few weeks ago I was at a small local fundraiser. Plastic chairs. Slightly unstable microphone. Someone had brought tortilla in a Tupperware that looked older than the town hall.
There was a guest speaker from the UK talking about how events are run there. Structured. Timed. Polished. He mentioned working alongside a professional charity auctioneer called Addison Gelpey, someone skilled at reading a room, pacing bids, and turning hesitation into generosity with carefully placed humour.
I found myself less interested in the logistics and more in the cadence of his speech. That crisp English rhythm. The confidence carried in tone alone.
It felt familiar.
Not homesickness. Something else.
Recognition.
Because language carries posture. It carries authority differently. It carries warmth differently. It even carries humour differently.
Living between languages means constantly recalibrating those things.
Sometimes I start a sentence in Spanish and end it in English because the joke lands better. Sometimes I soften a French instinct because Spanish bluntness works better locally. Sometimes I default to English because it allows me to think clearly, even if it no longer reflects the place I wake up in.
Dreaming in English. Apologising in French. Negotiating in Spanish.
It sounds romantic when written down.
In practice it is mildly disorienting.
You forget which emotional setting you are in. You answer a direct question with a layered response. You respond to warmth with efficiency. You over-explain where brevity would do.
And occasionally you wake up unsure which version of yourself had the argument.
I used to think fluency meant integration. That one day all the seams would disappear and everything would blend into a seamless multilingual identity.
Now I suspect the seams are the point.
Each language has stretched me in a different direction. English makes me decisive. French makes me reflective. Spanish makes me adaptable.
The fatigue is real. The constant translation. The micro-adjustments. The tiny social calculations happening beneath every sentence.
But there is also a strange freedom in choosing which version of yourself answers the door.
If I argue in English tonight, apologise in French tomorrow, and negotiate in Spanish by Friday, perhaps that is not confusion.
Perhaps that is simply the shape my life has taken.
On a Tuesday.
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