what does knowing different languages mean anyways?

i've always felt so profoundly weird about languages. there's really the typical stuff that are more normalized than when i was growing up:

• don't ask someone "say something in X language!" like we are zoo animals and for your entertainment. i already feel like a jester to perform in white-cultured normative groups and audiences anyways.
• there are many ways to be bilingual and you can fill it out in job forms - written, speaking/verbal, listening comprehension (yay capitalism?)
• i've talked about the need to unpack the "usefulness of language". many people now generally understand why i am bothered when the comment passes by... "it's so cool you know chinese, it's useful". gotta be critical of the racial hierarchy.
• i've talked to a lot of people why i don't love the idea of being called bilingual or multilingual - i can talk to you in environmental policy in english! i promise! but i really can't do that in my first language, mandarin. does that make me less of a mandarin speaker? how does that dismiss my complexity of identity housed in languages? 

however...
a new lightbulb about language went off in my head about a month ago. i went to get coffee with someone in downtown (the loop for my chicago friends) chicago, in which i communicated to a migrant family in spanish. 

they seemed profoundly grateful not only of the items i gave, but really of the language ability. at this point, multiple migrants that i have interacted with have mentioned i'm the only person that has talked to them in spanish all day.

let's be really clear - i am not fluent in spanish by any means. 

i also realize the idea of fluency is not only topic based (example above - i can't talk about environmental policy in chinese but i can definitely help you at a restaurant or talk to my dad) BUT ALSO the concept of fluency is really geographically based. maybe you knew this but i definitely DID NOT. 

i realized - in chicago, i am a lot less ashamed of what spanish and chinese i can and can't say. back in los angeles? my spanish is embarassing. back in the bay area? my chinese is something people have explicitly laughed at. but in chicago, i feel like i have some budding superpowers i've never truly felt before.

so if my confidence is so contexual, what does being multilingual even mean for anyone?