This is wonderful! What a great story! How delicious to have got to study languages. I think I'd have done that, too, if I had a do-over and could go back to the beginning of my adult life. Well, first I would have stuck it out at home, no matter how abusive and miserable it was, and not left at 16, dropped out of high school and got married at 17, had a baby at 18 and got divorced at 19 ...

I've dabbled a bit in learning other languages so I totally get what you're saying about all the challenges it brings. How lovely that you've helped a lot of people learn English - it's a tough one, given that 70% of it comes from other languages so it's stupidly inconsistent!!

Thanks for an interesting read!