Learning and More Learning

Life is a learning process, but sometimes I am tired of so much learning. Is it possible to stop the learning process at least for a few months and just relax and not have to think? When I was probably a few months old my mom was already practically forcing me to learn how to say “Ma-Ma.” Not that I remember those days, but I know because I have seen all the mothers in my family. I don’t know how difficult or easy those days of learning were for me, but in the end it was a learning process. I can even picture it, my mom saying something along the lines of, “Wandy, say ma-ma, pa-pa, yu-li (my sister’s name)…etc.” However, that was only the beginning of the process of learning and the beginning of this thing call learning and me.

I am thirty years old; I don’t have to say Ma-ma anymore, at least not twenty times a day, under my mom’s encouragement. However, I have been in the process of learning another language. I did not have to say Mo-ther for the first time, but I had to learn some other more complicated things than those days of ma-ma. “Okay, repeat with me,” said my first teacher. “My name is ___.” That was the first phrase I was taught in my process of learning English. I also had to repeat it millions of times, just as “ma-ma”. When my mother was the one who was forcing me to learn a word or a phrase, she never gave up on me. Patient as ever, my Mom repeated the phrase as many times as she considered necessary until I repeated it back to her. The real world is different. If by chance you find someone with patience, he or she would never be as patient as Mom. People usually wait for a moment until I understand and will perhaps even try one more time to explain something to me. However, if that does not work most walk away or give me a kind of “forget it” attitude and finish the conversation.

It has been a little bit more than four years since I started and I am still learning English. I am still studying, and as I imagine I was the first day of my life, I am still frustrated. In fact, I ask myself how is that many things don’t look as hard when you see others doing them but then is other story if I want to do them. For instance, when my mom taught me to walk, I probably thought it did not look so difficult until my mom stopped holding my hand. When you first learn something it looks so difficult, and it is so frustrating that it hurts your pride to the point that sometimes giving up is more appealing than to keep on trying.

This is a problem from which the only way to escape is by fully experiencing it. I know about frustration and I know about not giving up. I married not only the love of my life, but also one of my biggest frustrations (not in a bad way). I have gone through every possible frustration that communication on a daily basis can imply. I have gotten more frustrated  communicating with my husband than with anybody else. I have been living with my husband for a little more than two years, and even though I thought it was going to be one of the best things that could happen to me, in regards my journey to learn English, it has become a real and huge challenge. The cohabitation is already a challenge, but trying to overcome my limitations in order to communicate on a daily basis is even more difficult.

As I stated before, I have been in the learning process all my life, but what happens when I want to apply all that I have studied and learned but I cannot? In the past five years that I have gone to school to learn English something that I did learn very well is that giving up does not have a bad connotation to me anymore; sometimes it is easier and more practical.

Sometimes my husband has to repeat things more than three times, or I wait until he uses the same phrase or word again and I figure out what it means. Nevertheless, I have heard something few times and I still do not understand, I became one of the best survivors in this cohabitation environment. I go and search for words or phrases that he says in the wonderful and magical world of “GOOGLE” or “Urban Dictionary.” Those two websites have become my friends in this journey. Sometimes I even wonder if my husband makes up phrases, such as “I have the munchies,” “ I am wasted,” “dutch oven,” “mutt,” “It’s going to be a blast!” “Buddy,” “cut it out!” “goofing off,” “go crazy,” etc; just to mention some, but then I find out he is not making up these things because I always find their meaning online.

The language as well as my marriage has not been an easy process. I have my ups and downs. Sometimes, I take a rest from English. I isolate myself or look for a friend with whom I can speak Spanish to . The feeling of not learning English and even getting worse is always there, but then I realize I am probably getting better because two years ago I would never have realized my own mistakes. One day, all the effort of learning English and also keeping good communication in my marriage will be rewarded. In the long run there will be reward, a better understanding of ourselves and the vital phenomenon of communication. As long as we are in love, the frustration that communication implies right now will be overcome. My marriage is not more difficult or any different than any “normal” marriage. We are just two adults who have to work out, despite our other dissimilarities, a language barrier in such a way that it is possible to co-exist in love and harmony.