conversations with myself
May 24, 2006
As I was leaving for work this last night, I happened to look up at the sky just as I stepped outside. It looked like an oil painting, full of wispy clouds and muted shades of purple and blue. And suddenly I was reminded why I need to get batteries for my camera.
I’m considering getting a digital video recorder so that I can keep a video diary. When I am alone, I tend to talk to myself quite a lot. Sometimes it’s as though I a having a conversation with someone. I don’t know why I do this exactly, but I’ve been carrying on this way ever since I was little. I used to have a portable tape recorder that I carried with me EVERYWHERE when I was a kid.
I recorded everything—snippets of conversation, music from the radio, TV theme songs…I even made up stories and told them to this big bulky tape recorder.
Strange, though, that I can sit and talk openly to a tape recorder, but if you put me in a room full of people I become a silent wallflower.
I don’t talk around other people. Mostly, I’d rather listen. I’m a horrible conversationalist anyway. I think I’ve forgotten HOW to talk to people…undoubtedly, it was all those years I spent alone in hiding after my father died.
Besides, I really don’t think anyone would be very interested in anything I had to say. I’ve observed people for so long, I’ve noticed that most don’t really listen to each other even when they seem to be deeply in conversation. People constantly interrupt one another, talk over one another, jump from one subject right to the next without considering anything the other person just said…it’s quite irritating to me, actually. That’s why I stay to myself most of the time.
And that’s why people who never shut up seem to gravitate to me. Because I’m a good listener. Even when I’m silently wishing someone away from me, I still listen to whatever comes out of their mouth. And I consider it. And I hold it.
It’s a horrible burden to bear, walking around with all this excess information floating in your head. Maybe that’s why I talk to myself. It’s gotta go somewhere.
