I’ve loved language since I was little. I’ve loved the ways it allows connection when none seemed possible, and the ways writers strung words together to create symphonies. But sometimes I think the English language lacks adequate words to properly express the experiences of life.
What word do I fill in the blank with when I’m homesick but I’m at home? When I long for my bed in college only to lay in it and still not feel whole? Nostalgic doesn’t quite fit and unsettled is much too harsh. To be a deeply rooted person with a soul that feels like a vagabond cannot quite be explained unless it’s been experienced.
Or where is a word for an unexplainable desire to create? The kind of feeling that can only be described as an epiphany. Yet that word, ‘epiphany’, is still somehow too dull to hold the weight of passion in those moments, the buzz of a switch going off in one’s spirit and driving one’s soul.
Find a word for the sadness of doing what’s best for you when it hurts other people. Guilt is a close choice, but it misses the mark because it is only painted blue. It lacks the yellows of joy in knowing you made the right choice, the chaos of selfishness mixed with compassion.
This deficit of adequate words somehow makes the Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter easy to empathize with. He reflects the fragility of reason and the fine line between brilliance and madness. To speak nonsense because making sense is only possible with words fit for his feelings.
Maybe this is the line we all walk. A line thin enough to see the other side of, but far too vast to ever describe. A line which separates mind and soul. Where feelings drift like butterflies unable to be captured, studied, spoken. So yes, I love language, with all of its faults. Maybe it takes knowing more than one to place words to the intricacies of oneself. Maybe those intricacies were never meant to be caught.