One-and-a-half-lingual?

Sorry for the double post. I have limited Internet access, and as such, I decided that it would be easier to just post two entries that I'd already written at once. I have several more ideas for posts, that I hope I'll be able to post next week. However, since I don't have the most reliable access, that's hardly a guarantee.
This is something that I’d have never thought I would say: expressing even my most basic thoughts is extremely difficult. I’ve always identified myself as articulate, well-spoken, and, on occasion, perhaps even eloquent. I might be quieter than most, but that’s because I’ve always tried to choose my words well. That way, when I do speak, and when I do I usually speak for a long time, what I say has more weight. The words I use, and the thoughts that they’re conveying are stronger that way. While I might on occasion complain about my articulateness, I’ve always known that I am capable of explaining any of my thoughts or beliefs in English, and that my explanation will be understood. In fact, any problems that I might have in self-expression stem not from linguistic inability, but rather from the fact that I don’t understand what I’m trying to say. The language itself isn’t the problem.

Or so I thought. Until I came here I don’t think I understood exactly how difficult learning another language actually is. Granted, I knew that I wasn’t fluent in Spanish, but I think I thought that I was close enough that I would be able to get by, and that I would be able to express myself and make myself understood. I assumed that I wouldn’t need to be fluent, exactly, but fluent enough. And to be fair, this was a somewhat logical assumption. After all, I’ve been taking Spanish classes since my freshman year of high school. All of those years must have taught me something, right? Well, they did, but I don’t think that they taught me enough. I can usually understand what somebody says to me, and I can usually answer them back, but there are so many more things that I want to be able to say, so many ideas that I want to be able to explain. Whenever I’m in a situation where I need to discuss a complex idea, I find myself stricken mute because I don’t have the words for it. Or, when I do have the vocabulary I need, I begin to obsess about the different grammatical structure and I stumble over conjugations that I learned years ago, and so I still can’t express myself at all.

I suppose my choice to live on the border was particularly apt. In addition to living 5 minutes from the steel wall that separates México and the U.S., I’m also living in two languages. I still think in English, and thankfully, all but one of my classes are in English, but my family doesn’t speak any English at all. With my family, and with random people on the street, I speak Spanish. I watch Spanish TV, unless I’m feeling extremely homesick, in which case I watch American movies with Spanish subtitles. I cross the international border every Monday through Friday, but I cross the language barrier every five minutes. While I’m living a bilingual life in a bilingual world, I am not bilingual at all. At best, I’m one-and-a-half-lingual. (I don’t know what the prefix for one-and-a-half would be.) I can express basic ideas in Spanish, but my English is still light-years ahead of my Spanish. If I’m being completely honest with myself, it probably always will be. It’s extremely frustrating and exhausting to not be able to be as articulate as I normally am. Little misunderstandings are depressing, if only because I thought that I was beyond them. The most amusing part of this language struggle, at least to me, is that my host family seems to be pretty much oblivious to it. They’ll say things like “Ella se habla muchísimo Español.” Or, “Tu Español es muy bien. Entiendes casi todos.” I just don’t have the words to make them understand. Hasta luego, Kat.