COMMUNICATE BETTER

one of my insecurities is about how i (consciously) communicate to others. if i really think about where this stems from, i would say it started like this:

• growing-up bilingual, when i was a child, i remember struggling with being understood in one language over another - at times it was hard in french, at times it was hard in english. as an adult, it's easier for me to express my emotions in french but because my written french is not perfect, i won't subject you to it, so i write in english. 
• i had a very difficult relationship with my father and one of my defense mechanisms was to hide my feelings/emotions/opinions so as to avoid any violent bursts of anger on his part - as a result, as soon as i am scared or feel threatened, i block myself and take the "no worries, i'm fine" approach; i usually realize i'm doing this in retrospect, never at the time. unfortunately for me and those who love me, this defense mechanism is deeply ingrained and bitch to get rid of. one day at a time!
• another of my insecurities is of being let down by men and so i find myself zigzagging about communicating my feelings because once i'm out there in the open, vulnerable and 'weak', i risk getting sliced. i find myself wanting to say something important to someone, like a guy i'm seeing or a relative, and the words just get stuck in my throat, leaving me feeling like all the will in the world could not force those words out. it's a form of paralysis. i feel paralyzed within. i know my world won't end if those words jump-off the tip of my tongue and into the universe, my head knows that but my soul holds on tight. 
• i was seeing a therapist (in Spanish) in Barcelona in my early 20s who told me that when i told him about my life affecting events, it was like i was telling him about the movie that i saw the night before or the book i was reading, that i wasn't communicating how those events made me feel at the time or now, that no emotions filtered through my words. i then started getting paranoid about how i was describing stories to people and kept on focusing on my supposed emotional detachment.
• the next two men in my life said the same thing as the Barcelona therapist, that they never knew how i felt, that i didn't talk about my life enough, that they couldn't understand where i was coming from. part of me thinks that that is maybe how/why i lost them.
• by living alone these past two years, i feel like i am struggling socially sometimes, that i don't know how to talk about myself, on the most basic levels, ie. explaining where i come from and what work i do or what i'm interested in. i was talking about this with my friend Emmanuelle, who also is a foreigner in Italy and she was saying that this may have to do with all the languages we speak and that we're foreigners here, that maybe because we don't always understand everything around us, we are removed from our environment which causes us to socially retract. 

my conclusion: i have decided to embark on a communication mission - i don't want to hide anymore, i don't want to feel uncomfortable or constrained or blocked. i am talking more about my days to friends, even if sometimes to people who live far away; i'm also trying to communicate more with the men in my life, mainly friends or 'others', pushing myself to express my emotions more, really telling someone how something felt or affected me, how something made me really happy or sad and why; i know i can't control their reactions and i should not be afraid of that.

i smell freedom...