The Reason I Talk To Myself

November 6, 2023

It was an epiphany of sorts that I had this morning.

Early morning drive. Way too early for me. But the van had to go to the shop and the shop isn’t just around the corner from here; a place that I affectionately refer to as “on the edge of somewhere”.

I stopped at the Love’s on the rez for a coffee and an apple Danish. I take my coffee black, thank you. It was kind of hard getting out of there because of all the heavy trucks. One of them hauling a hunk of a machine. Massive oversize load. I’d love to sit and watch it operate.

Merging onto the interstate was simple enough. There was a long opening with a blue semi back there a good distance. I’ve got the radio up listening to some good classical rock. The cruise is set on sixty-five and I’m groovin’ to the tunes. I’m enjoying my apple Danish and coffee while, all the while, wondering about why I seem to talk out loud practically all the time anymore.

Bingo. The light goes on up in the attic. Then the little dude up there sorts through a folder and reveals an answer. Astounding.

The reason that I talk to myself is that I am just thinking out loud.

Even when I am answering myself in one of my many personal self-dialogues, I am simply thinking out loud.  And the deeper self-revelation is that this is not something that I picked up after Shirli died. I had begun to really wonder about that. I’ve never had to think about that before. But no. I spent a lot of time alone as a child growing up on that little farm. I talked to myself a lot when I was alone as a child … sometimes very afraid … sometimes feeling very neglected and starving for human affection.

No judgments from me. That’s just the way it was. And there is no changing any of that.

Now that I think about it, I’ve honestly never stopped talking out loud to myself. There have been plenty of times when I didn’t talk aloud to myself because I had people to talk to. There were conversations to be had with people. But, when not surrounded by people, I still talked to myself. And these days, I spend a lot of time alone talking to myself.

Talking to myself is an inseparable inherent part of my writing. I’ve never thought about that before now. As a writer, the words that I type out of my head, I speak them aloud as I type them. I don’t know if it’s always been this way. But I can’t think of a time when it wasn’t. Those who know me personally, if they want, can read the words I type and hear my voice along with the inflections and pauses that are naturally part of my way of speech.

My emotions have gone to a different plane. My emotions, of late, by absolutely no effort from me to conjure them up as an act, seem, of their own accord, to flow naturally into whatever I am doing or saying. I’ve noticed it when playing guitar and singing here in the solitude of this little house. I especially noticed it yesterday morning when out of the blue I was asked to front the choir at church. Totally unrehearsed. That was quite awesome at several levels with the huge bonus of having an accomplished pianist playing and a beautiful soprano voice in the background with an ear that could follow the vocal liberties that I often tend to take with the printed notes on the page and harmonize with me without missing a beat or going off key.

My cup runneth over.