Inner Voice

I have an extraordinarily loud inner voice, and I took it for granted that everyone had some sort of private dialogue with themselves, until I found out differently a few months ago. Read the title of this article, which says all you need to know. I still struggle with the idea, but it also explains why so many people have assumed that if I don’t say my thoughts out loud, my thoughts don’t exist.

I started off extremely shy, and once I was labeled as quiet, no one wanted to hear anything I had to say. However, that didn’t mean that I possessed an empty mind, so I’ve spent most of my life telling myself all of those thoughts that no one else ever bothered to listen to. In many ways, I was my only confidant during my formative years, and I suppose that my chatty brain is the natural consequence of that.

I often have a monologue going on in my brain. It doesn’t matter if I’m sewing or washing dishes, I’m always chattering away with myself in my head. I can even talk to my own fictional characters as if they were real.  It’s one of those things that I don’t tell most people about, since they aren’t very likely to understand — I’m sure that a psychiatrist would have a field day with me.

Ultimately, that’s why I write: the Voice has to go somewhere. That’s also why I feel compelled to self-publish, instead of keeping my stories hidden away on a flash drive somewhere. At the end of the day, I’m still human, and I still want to feel like someone hears me.