The Language I Think In
The first time I understood that language could shape my very thoughts, I was speaking in a tongue that was not my own. The words felt like gloves too big for my hands—awkward, heavy, and cold against my skin.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t speak. It was that the words did not belong to the part of me that knows how to feel.
That day, I realized language is not just a tool for communication—it is the architecture of thought itself. It decides the rhythm of our memories, the texture of our emotions, the way love rolls off the tongue or hides in silence. It changes the shape of our joy, our grief, our rage, depending on the vocabulary we have been given.
And the language we inherit is never neutral. It comes bearing the weight of history—what was fought for, what was stolen, what was silenced. It carries the invisible fingerprints of our culture, our ancestors, and all the mouths that spoke it before us.
I have learned to honor the words I think in, even when they are messy, imperfect, or slow to arrive. To let them guide me like an old friend who knows the back roads to my truth.
Because the language I think in is not just how I speak—it is how I know myself.
It is the mirror I carry in my mind, showing me not only who I am, but who I might yet become.
