Talking
There is great fear in me – I fear failure but I also dread my own success. Living in this contradictory state, I had no other recourse but to talk to myself (as I would talk to people whom I am very familiar with) as if there existed two personas in me, one very consoling, counseling, mature, wise beyond his years, and the other very much in need of support, encouragement, like he would be living on every piece of advice that he stumbles up on the dreary road he threads.
I would talk to myself as often as I could, but of course I rarely do this when there are people around, people who can hear me, people who will immediately judge me and attribute my apparent insanity to perhaps some problem or predicament of my own. Anyway, this makes me a great compulsive talker whenever I find myself alone, very much like a 13-year old who has just discovered the power of self-stimulation and just then jerks off whenever he finds opportunity knocking in his fragile but exciting moments of sheer solitude. When I find myself alone, out of anyone’s earshot (at least, the way I imagine myself to be), I talk to myself. I converse with myself. Then I break down and laugh at myself for doing things like these, and I feel pitiful.
Of course, having a cigarette completes the ensemble. What better mood can there be, I am alone, it is 2 am, my house brightly lit, a lighter by the coffee table and there am I, asking myself how my day has been, talking myself out of my present concerns, pretending that someone concerned is intently listening, someone is giving me much needed advice, patiently nursing me back to a healthy state of mind and a hopeful disposition. Then, whenever the ice starts to harden, and no words could be said as of the specific moment, there will always be that cigarette to keep you company. It always saves the occasion from relapsing, or perhaps evolving, into high drama. So in a way, the cigarette keeps me sane while I dabble away with myself and lose my head.
On certain perfect days I would have a glass of whisky (Walker or Chivas – leftovers from the recent new year’s) and some uncommon brand of cigarette to make sure the two conversationalists are well taken care of; and how can I forget, I would play Revolver and listen to She Said, She Said, I Want to Tell You, and For No One as if the Beatles were my destined musicians, officially designated by destiny to play the soundtrack of my life. They, as it turns out to me, know how it feels to hear you talk with yourself. And I, for one good thing, know that I tell myself only the things that I think I can never ever bring myself to tell anyone else. I will only tell myself the purest, as well as the most abominable, thoughts that make me humanly me. I become who I am because I harbor certain ideas and feelings and I am lucky enough to have someone to listen to me, because otherwise I would have just kept these things to myself and in my old age I shall perish, just like everyone, without letting any of their secrets spill; that way they are to blame for drowning their own hearts.
I listen to myself talk. Words that are too wise for the ears of other people, and, on the other hand, to banal to be used in my prayers. I realized that all my life I have refused, willingly, to share my sincerest thoughts, whether good or bad, to other people for the simple reason that I think my life, or at least the way I perceive it, is too complicated for straight narration. My prayers, meanwhile, contain general thoughts, abstract ideas that are meaningful to me on the spiritual level, but they are not entirely comforting, I must say, during times of lethargy and soporific abandon. So I talk to myself, and I listen to myself talk. The mark of a blossoming madman, someone crazy, someone who could love so much and lose his sanity at the same time. There is not much difference, Nietzsche said. These things are beyond good and evil. And as I continue talking to myself in times of sheer solitude, I could not help but feel a sense of self-possession, a great deal of self-control. To know thyself, to know myself, by talking to myself, makes me perhaps a whole lot more sane than everybody else.
