Two years into teaching English in Barcelona I have this feeling of doom. It’s a hollowness in my stomach, a black hole sucking everything in. It's too late to leave but too late to stay. Time grinds to a halt. I no longer understand anything; at the event horizon, the rules no longer apply. We fly back from a short summer vacation in Prague and the plane circles the city, round and round, waiting to land, and I look down and I recognize every landmark, and I see all of my neighborhoods, and can only think, why? Why come back? I don't belong here. I've been to sixteen countries now and I don't belong anywhere. Places are places; each unique and yet exactly the same. I'm squished next to the window and I'm hyperventilating over my journal because my husband is just to my left, and I don't know him at all. He's just another stranger. I suck air in and in and in but I'm not laughing anymore, I'm gasping.

I'm not quite right. I'm mixing up my pronouns. I am we, even when I'm by myself. Or worse, I'm in the third person, alone, disassociated altogether. The fall term starts and I can't remember how to spell because I can't see the words right; I run my eyes over the shapes of the letters and it's all a hodgepodge of disjointed parts. My English is disintegrating. I walk to the whiteboard and I forget what I was going to say. I hesitate. I second guess. I increasingly do not have the answers. I mimic; I parrot. It's not a conscious decision, but rather the path with the least resistance. I realize I’m speaking English like a Spanish-speaker speaks English. Forget, “It's a nice day, isn't it?” I say instead, “It's a nice day, no?” I can make pictures in my mind but I can’t find the word; I can't recall the word for blender so I just tell my students it’s a “smoothie-maker” and get on with the lesson. Two peas in a pod? Not anymore. It's two apples in barrel. I'm aware that this isn't right, but I am the teacher, and English is whatever I want it to be.

I try to socialize but I find myself rendered half-mute in the corner, alone, mumbling into my fifth cup of cheap wine, scowling at the latest TEFL grads from Bath and Minnesota. I open my mouth and out tumbles something not Spanish nor Catalan nor even English: a language fart. Despite months of classes and a language partner, my Spanish is still far from fluent. I know the words but I just can't seem to communicate. I can't keep up with the pace of it; natives talk much faster than I can pick their words from the air. And not many want to speak Spanish at all. Spanish, in Catalunya, is at best a middleman; at worst, oppressive, fascist. Locals will speak Spanish to me, and Catalan to their real friends. I can understand it – Catalan – in a basic sense, and while I can read it, I can't speak it. I don't quite get the grammar and I can't make the sounds; I do not know how to approach so many apostrophes. My spoken Catalan is mostly limited to common groceries like fruit: grape is raȉm, peach pressec; strawberries morph to maduixes. An elderly man helps me pick through a pile of mushrooms at the vegetable stand; xampinyons, he says, pronounced so close to “champions” I can hear Queen croon in my head. They hunt them here – mushrooms – out in the countryside. Not collected, not gathered – but hunted. This is the literal translation. It's a peculiar bit of lexicon. But I like the old man. He just wants a good bunch of mushrooms, and so do I, because I like mushrooms too. I like mushrooms because they're enigmatic. Neither plant nor animal, nor something in between: mushrooms belong to a different category of thing. The old man sees the mushrooms and he sees me too, with them, alike in our peculiarity but somehow indescribably, too.

I fear the worst. I fear I have become not worldly, not cultured, not even interesting. I'm just another freaky expat, mixing up my languages and confusing my phrasal verbs, changing my accent to match with whom I'm speaking. I don't even realize I'm doing it, until other Americans begin to ask where I'm from. New Zealand? South Africa? Forgive me for asking, but are you a native speaker?

Am I? I begin to wonder.

I swim endless laps in the city pool but I can't keep pace; I run Montjuic all the way up to the castle but I don't go in; I take Spin class in Catalan but I don't understand the jokes. Am I only a mask worn over a mask worn over a mask? Is there anything underneath? Or is it just turtles all the way down?

I take a step back. I watch myself from above; I listen to my own echo. I wonder if I don't sound just like my boss, Tiff: take advantage. Of my youth, my gender, my American passport, my light skin. My ability to be here, working under the table, and not even be seen. Not everyone has it so easy. The Chinese are mocked for their accents, for mixing up their 'r's' and 'l's,' for looking different. The Muslims are condemned for their hijabs, their aversion to pork, their reluctance to acculturate. The North Africans are chased through the streets by the mossos – the local police – their sacks of knock-off purses slung over their backs as they sprint away, trying to vanish into the city, if only for a moment.

Yet everyone frequents the chinos because the goods are cheap, and they'll nab groceries at the paki on Sundays when the supermarkets are closed, and they'll buy the fake purses with cash right there on the street, because they look like they’re Luis Vuitton but can be had at a fraction of the price. And they'll hire an English teacher if she's a native, if she's pretty enough, if she can sell language as an ideal that's only just out of reach.

For all my social gaffes, my awkward hand gestures, fashion faux pas and dad jokes, I can still blend in. I can not stick out, when I want to, if I try hard enough. I put an ad online and I'm buzzed straight in, no questions asked. I'm told life stories, heartache, regret, hopes and fears. I'm inside, but just. I'm in the doorway. I don't quite exist here – a least not as a person, but as a sort of archetype – an idea. Maybe the culture of us travelers is simply its absence; our society is based on a lack of tangibility. We aren't free to be ourselves so much as to build a new, hypothetical self from borrowed parts of everyone else. We're a patchwork, a camouflage, a chameleon. We are bits and pieces, all cobbled together, largely free from the constraints of our traditions but trapped at the edge of the black hole, lost in time and space. We take a new job; we move into a new apartment; we adopt a new persona. We say, “Okay,” and we keep adapting. The light bends around us, and we disappear.

-Petra Stevenson

Petra Stevenson is a neurodivergent writer and personal trainer. She spent two years teaching English under the table in Spain before returning to California where she lives with her girlfriend and their golden retriever, Archie.