The voice in my head

 

Whoever I am, whatever I am, seems to be a collection of events, pictures, memories and stories that kind of clump together to form a lump called me. The lump right now doesn't do much of anything besides contemplate the woes of being a conscious lump. In the past, the lump was relatively free of all this introspection. It was unformed and less solid. Like the fine particles of pristine kitty litter, you know, before the cat poops and pees on it. Great way to introduce myself, "Hi, I'm a clump of soiled cat litter."

But before life did what it did to forge me into the form I currently hold, by pooping and peeing all over me, I was just this bag of nice granular bits of mostly dust-free amorphous bulk material. I could have been a sack of flour, or rice or some other potentially useful cooking ingredient. But I turned out to be this wonderfully absorbent, self-adhering stuff that lines a cat toilet. It was all fine and dandy when I was in the store on a shelf, a bag of pure, unknown potential. But waking up to my purpose in life, to be the emotional equivalent to a toxic waste receptacle, was kind of a downer.

Throughout my life, there's been this voice in my head. It's always there, commenting, offering up opinions and judgements, giving advice (usually critical and seldom encouraging). I don't even know if this voice is me or not. I mean, it's my head, I should be aware of who's got the floor in there. In my christian years I'd have called it the Devil or the Holy Spirit, depending on the content of what it was saying at any given time. But then, who was the guy making the decision about whose voice it was? That's three people in there, at this point. It's starting to get crowded.

Sometimes the voice takes on the characteristics of an actual person I know. When the voice says, "You'd better get started on doing something productive today, before you let the whole day go by. AGAIN," I think of it as my wife, the personification of my inner critic. It was nicer when she was actually around to talk back to. Now I just appear as a crazy person, arguing out loud with a voice in my head. I guess it's all cool until your argument becomes audible to passersby. Living alone and isolated, most of my crazy flies under the radar.

Other voices chime in too, but they all have similar criticisms or admonitions. Where's my inner cheerleader? My "you can do it" guy? Who's responsible for directing traffic in there and who decides who gets to speak? I need to find that guy and fire his ass, or at least give him a good talking to.

I've listened to enough self-help books to have a whole roomful of sages giving me quality advice. Why do they always get shouted down by the darker voices? The fortress of my mind has been breached and overrun by zombies who mill about and devour anything resembling decent, aware, conscious thought. The sages and gurus are silent, presumably meditating or something, rather than grabbing their rifles and protecting the castle.

So, right now, I'm supposed to be structuring my thoughts into a cohesive story-line. Make it interesting and palatable to readers. Remember to include juicy details; readers love that. Tone down the endless philosophizing and long, drawn out analogies. Stay on topic. Quit meandering. Whose voice is that, I wonder?

I guess producing bags of unformed, bulk product, in hopes that one day they will make a fine cake and not turn out to be cat box filler, is a God-sized job and must have its share of disappointment.