Multilingual Masking, part 2
In Part 1, I wrote about discovering that Greek Maria and English Maria were fundamentally different people, and how crisis forced me to find authentic language in both. But recognizing the masks is just the beginning. The real question is: how do we unmask when we’re constantly switching between linguistic selves?
My experience isn’t unique. If you’re reading this as someone who navigates the liminal terrain between languages and cultures, you probably understand exactly what I mean.
What does this mean for multilingual maskers? How do those of us with two or more languages become fully ourselves when we’re constantly switching between them?
Unmasking requires time and effort. It requires moving through stages of grief once the awareness comes, and it becomes doubly hard for people whose lives traverse languages and continents.
The questions that arise from this awareness are not easily answered. What face do I put on when my language changes? And how much does that face resemble who I am?
These are questions of a deeply personal and philosophical journey we must undertake to find authenticity in communication. It is a journey that must also be translated into the languages we speak.
When you come from a home where emotional depth wasn’t explored, it can make you think this depth doesn’t exist. I spent much of my twenties resenting any form of emotional self-knowledge. I didn’t want emotions. I didn’t want to feel anything.
I found emotions inconvenient and sensitivity a liability. The more deeply I could bury them, the better. Greek Maria was the perfect template. She didn’t express emotions. This version was like a robot. She was a caricature of a person with a preloaded operating system: just smile, say good health to all, and keep moving.
And so I moved forward trying to hide everything. Trying to make this robot-self my main persona. But this attempt to bury all feelings did not work.
I shattered.
I endured a decade of severe burnout, chronic illness and debilitating pain, all while moving five or six times across Asia and Europe.
Robot Maria was a well-tried experiment of thirty years, but she had to be decommissioned when her operating system no longer matched her environment.
Only now, sitting quietly in my apartment in Rhodes, with my partner on the other side of the continent, my diaspora community on the other side of the world, my home in the land of my first language, do I really have the space to feel this shift.
Who am I when I speak Greek? And who do I want to be when I speak English? Who might I become when I stop performing?
Nowadays, Greek Maria is less a caricature. She is becoming a more well-rounded human. She has the language to have conversations of depth in Greek and in English. She has managed to translate the knowledge within to the languages she uses at home, online, and in person.
I want to acknowledge, with reverence, that double work: that immeasurable amount of extra time and effort it takes multilingual maskers to become authentically themselves. And I want to acknowledge myself for undertaking this work, even if it began under duress. Because now I am meeting my authentic self in all its forms.
This new me, she’s crabbier, less exaggerated. But she’s not constantly performing for the room like a jester at court. She’s not an emotionless drone either.
Robot auntie is gone. And the person emerging? She is yet to be discovered.
Some Journaling Prompts for Multilingual Maskers:
If you’re exploring the space between languages and authentic expression, I invite you to consider some of the following questions in an artistic meditation: musically, in writing, painting, song, movement or any other form you gravitate towards. Give yourself the space to feel into what comes up.
- What face do I put on when my language changes?
- How much does that face resemble who I truly am?
- Who am I when I speak my mother tongue?
- Who do I want to be when I speak different languages?
- Who might I become when I stop performing?
