Skip to the TLDR if need be, and I apologize for the really long post in advance.
In my life, I’ve never really felt bothered by the fact that I’ve been monolingual (I’m American), but all that changed two years ago in my second year of university. I was in a group for people who were learning korean and literally everyone I saw, not just the korean students, knew a second language, with one of my later friends from China already knowing Cantonese and Mandarin in addition to English.
For the next two years I’ve been caught in a never-ending loop of indecisiveness as I kept trying to logically deduce which languages I “should” learn — for example, I would think things like “Spanish is the next most common in my area, so I should learn that...but I’m exposed to the Japanese language more (I watch anime and play games) so I should learn that..but I’m obsessed with Taiwan and traditional Chinese culture so I should learn mandarin...but maybe I’ll seem more educated if I learn French...” etc...basically anything that will make me feel less dumb. At my worst point, I was cycling between 20 prospective languages, now I cycle through about 6+.
It doesn’t help that I’ve seen Reddit posts and YouTube videos that imply, or in some cases explicitly state (looking at you, Langfocus) that monolinguals (particularly monolingual Americans) are stupid. And even though I’ve grown up in an immigrant community and would never look down on immigrants and their languages — to this day, by virtue of being a monolingual american, I feel like an idiot.
Everyday I keep trying to tell myself that I have other talents and abilities (I compose music a lot, have perfect pitch and I play the piano, I’m above average at online video games with very little practice) and that other people’s multilingualism is mostly circumstantial (I wasn’t born in other countries with excellent English education) but it’s not enough. Ironically, I’m skinny as hell and yet I’m never bothered with that, but anything that implies that I’m stupid triggers me greatly and I don’t know why. (I’ve had similar issues regarding my inability to draw)
TLDR — due to circumstances, I’ve become very self conscious about my monolingualism, and now suffer from extreme indecisiveness that prevents me from even starting a language at all. Now I’m not even sure whether my current motivations are due to a complex or due to a genuine desire to learn. Before these issues I had only an interest in learning Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean.
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via Learn Online English Speaking
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