The other day, I went to an opera night thing at a restaurant with my mom. Some friends of my mom were there, some who I hadn't seen in awhile who I wanted to talk to, and others who I had never met before who I wanted to talk to. And hardly any of them spoke Farsi or German, and only one of them spoke either of these languages fluently. So talking to people was quite a challenge.
Before the singing started, there was at least a half-hour of talking and holding drinks. It's so surprising how supportive my mom has been about my not speaking English, and how my dad doesn't understand at all why i'm doing this, when it's normally not at all this way with my parents. My mom told each person "this is my daughter, she's on strike and isn't speaking English." I sometimes just spoke German or Farsi with people and they sometimes understood what I said just by my tone of voice. It's a lot easier than pretending to be deaf and writing everything on a piece of paper like I did at the airport.
My mom told everyone about her trip with me in Austria, and also about how difficult it is to get ahold of me because of how often I avoid the telephone like it's a possessed object. One of her friends said to me "See, we're talking about you. Don't you want to say anything?" And funny enough, I didn't have anything to say, even though my mom was talking about me. I just wasn't getting the urge to add something.
Later on, with my sister, however, she suddenly refused to listen to anything I said unless I spoke English. Every time I said anything, she'd say "what?" and pretend she hadn't heard me. But she soon gave up after I continued to say stuff in Farsi.
I have slipped up a few times, so not everything is going perfectly perfect.
Before my sister had to get on a plane and go to Burning Man, she had some clothes to sell. So we went shopping. I avoided speaking English, and even spoke German at a pizza place. But when I went in search of gloves that I had been looking for, the store had them in glass cases instead of on the counter like they did the last time I went there several years ago. I had to ask someone to take the gloves out so I could see them. I decided to do it in English, because I got scared. I have bad memories of this store, because the first time I went there, they accused me in advance of shoplifting, when I have in fact never stolen anything from a store in my life and had no intention of doing so.
I immediately felt guilty for speaking English, and felt horrible anyway because asking for things in stores and buying things is exactly the type of situation that I miss doing in German, and yet it is the most difficult thing to keep doing in German. I can be sure that I won't want to speak English in a store again because for some reason it makes me feel horrible and makes me crazy.
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