Not Thinking in Translation

The English was a wall. Every thought had to cross it before I could write it down—get filtered, get made acceptable to an imaginary audience that didn’t actually exist. I opened the editor less and less. Eventually I stopped opening it at all.

The friction was too high. Translation isn’t just swapping words, it’s swapping yourself. You think in English, you edit in English, you perform in English. You’re never just thinking anymore.

So I switched back to German. Not because it’s better or purer or any of that—just because it’s what I think in. When the language doesn’t get in the way, the words come. You write what you actually thought instead of what you think the thinking should sound like.

The past few days I’ve just been living. Hung out with Eniz and his girlfriend, went to Lidl twice for no reason except we felt like it. Dajalein came by in the morning. I took Julia out for lunch at the Chinese place. Ana and Daja showed up in the afternoon. That night I watched Dragon Ball GT with Mille. No plans, no points being made. Just hours passing with people I actually like.

That’s what happens when you stop translating yourself: you remember there’s something else to do besides managing how you look. You hang out with people without narrating it. You watch what you want to watch. You think in your own language and don’t have to apologize for how it sounds.

I brought back the old entries too. Not some grand restoration project, just the acknowledgment that they were there and shouldn’t disappear. Some of it’s broken now—pictures are gone, things don’t work the way they did—but that’s not really the point. Life breaks things. You live with the mess.