“Stop talking to yourself!”
I looked over to the sofa where my sister lay on her back with an open book in her lap and a pen in her hand. She shot me a grim look that was no-doubt meant to follow her words through, deep under my skin and into the soul. Her words had no impact on me. They ricocheted off me like waves falling onto a well polished rock.
“I’m not talking to myself,” I replied. “Not out loud, at least.”
“Maybe not out loud in the literal meaning of the words,” she admitted. “But the body language you express as you pace the room makes it quite clear that you are talking to yourself. And, in fact, at the top of your voice. Quite deafening. I must say.”
“And what if I’m talking to myself?” I asked and paused my circling of the dining room table so I could better concentrate on the discussion.
“It’s creepy,“ she uttered before pausing a second to blow a bubble with her gum. ”Why can’t you be normal?”
Normal. What was that, now?
“And what do you think you are doing?” I asked back, rolling my eyes.
“What does it look like?” she asked and lifted the book she had been writing in before. “I’m writing in my journal. That is, when I’m able to concentrate in-between your silent screams.”
“Can I read?”
“No.”
“Can anyone read?”
“No,” she replied and quickly closed her book as a precaution and to underline her words. “It’s my journal and no one reads it but me.”
“Aren’t you then just as much talking to yourself as I’m talking to myself?” I asked and continued my journey around the living room table, taking good care to step down correctly so that my feet matched the pattern in the underlying carpet.
“We’re definitely not the same,” she sighed. “It’s normal to write a journal but it’s not normal to talk to yourself. Why don’t you just keep a journal like other civilized people?”
She opened her journal again and prepared to go back to her writing. I gave myself time to reflect on how I could reply. Right foot with a five degree outward angle. Left foot with a five degree inward angle.
“I don’t want to,̦” I said finally, after a few seconds contemplation. “I don’t like to leave a paper-trail. It’s also more environmentally sustainable to talk to yourself. Lower carbon footprint.”
