The Language I Almost Lost

A couple of years ago, a childhood friend said in passing:

“Why is Target so expensive?”

I remember pausing, caught off guard.

“Yeah,” I said.

To me, Target was where I’d run the night before pajama day to grab something cheap for my daughter. It wasn’t where I went when things were expensive—it was where I went when I needed them to not be.

But I also understood what she meant. Her world wasn’t unfamiliar to me. It was the one I came from. However, that wasn’t my reality now, so I didn’t know how to respond.

That moment stayed with me because it wasn’t the only time I noticed a fracture between my past and my present.

Later, a relative came to visit and I noticed her admiring our couch. She then asked the question:

“How much did that set you back?”

I paused.

“It was reasonable,” I said.

She kept at it until I told her the number.

I struggled because I knew that in the rooms I’d been sitting in, you don’t ask the question and you certainly don’t say the number. Not because you’re ashamed — but because money had become a different kind of conversation. One with unspoken rules I’d absorbed without realizing it. This was a relative – someone who’d known me for a long time – and I was unknowingly putting on a show for her.

I didn’t notice it happening, but I was losing fluency in one of my own languages – I was forgetting my roots.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped translating my old world into my new one and started replacing it. I set aside one language for the one I thought I needed in the rooms I was now in.

The thing I’ve realized since then is that being fluent in both worlds was never the problem. Forgetting I spoke two languages was. I had been sitting on the precipice of two worlds wondering if I should fully embrace one over the other, when the power is in embracing both.

If you’ve ever caught yourself performing a language that wasn’t originally yours, you haven’t lost your way; there is no guidebook for navigating two cultures simultaneously.

Say the number if you want, don’t if you don’t. Let Target be expensive and cheap at the same time. Stop choosing which version of yourself shows up. Bring both.

And yes, that expired sriracha is still good.