What I enjoy very much about living on my own is that I can have conversations with myself out loud. This doesn’t make me a mental. On the contrary, I do it because I am all too well aware of my own sanity and thus enjoy the “joke” of appearing to be insane. It is post-modern insanity and thus very amusing to the audience of me. Of course, in reality, anything I have to say to myself can be said silently in my head. But where’s the fun in that? It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary and thus have not comedy value at all. As long as I don’t tell anyone that I talk to myself then what harm can it do? Oh bum.
Yet I have noticed that I do tend to talk to myself out loud more often when I am faced with an issue which I have contradictory opinions about. Almost as if there are two distinct personalities within me, who disagree and have to have it out in the open. As I say this couldnÂ’t be defined as mentalness of schizophrenia because I know that I donÂ’t have two personalities. Just one personality, that some time doesnÂ’t agree with itself. ItÂ’s an important distinction.
I had been binging on snacks all day as a way to get me through my work (and painting the second coat of paint in my bathroom – still looks shit). I put on half a stone in Australia and I want to lose it, so it is annoying to me that I continue to eat rubbish all day, even though I have asked me not to.
Just before I was going to sleep I caught myself heading for the kitchen. I could tell by the way that I was walking that I was going there to make a couple of pieces of toast. Even though I wasn’t hungry and even though I was about to go to sleep. I called myself an idiot, but I didn’t care. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“I’m making some toast, ” I replied. I had a surly look on my face and was clearly challenging my authority and I didn’t like it.
“But, I thought you wanted to lose some weight,” I chided. I found myself judgemental and patronising and I didn’t like it. And I told myself so.
“Don’t act all high and mighty with me. You’re exactly the same as me, so don’t pretend you’re better than me. I don’t care what you think. I just fancy eating some toast,” and I laughed openly as I said it. Well you can imagine that I didn’t like that. I pushed the bread away from myself and told me that I couldn’t have any. But no-one tells me what to do. I’m a rebel. I hate all kinds of authority. Even when the authority is me.
So I made the toast and I ate it in front of my own stupid face. And I loved it. And hated it. But I was above having more of an argument. I wanted to show myself how childish I thought I was being, so I just let myself eat the toast, with a slightly smug smile playing on my lips, which meant I ended up spilling a lot of the toast on the floor, which was what IÂ’d wanted. But I just ate the crumbs off the floor with no regard for hygiene. It was a Pyrrhic victory (the epitome of a Pyrrhic victory in fact), but it was still a victory.
“You’ll regret eating that in the morning,” I informed me.
And when I stepped on the scales to see I had gained another pound, I saw that I had been right all along. And wrong of course. And I was both unhappy.
I decided from now on that me and me werenÂ’t talking. And so did I.
I wonder which of me will break first.
