I am growing and changing for the better.

Learning a language has a stage where you understand far more than you can say. You follow the whole conversation and can contribute nothing. It feels like failure and it is actually the middle of the process.

Better rarely announces itself while it's happening. It tends to feel like getting worse at something you used to do fluently, because you've stopped doing it the old easy way.

If today felt clumsy, that isn't evidence against the claim. Clumsy is what the crossing between two competences feels like from the inside.