Talking to myself

I'm antsy. I can't stop my brain. It keeps going and it won't let me think. I can't turn the internal dialogue off. I wake up in the mornings and it's like it's already been on for hours, I go to sleep and it's still there, in the back of my head haunting my dreams.

This is why I write. Writing makes it go away. It doesn't turn it off, it just makes it the focus, when I write exactly what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling. I'm hiding in Spanish lately. Spanish pop, my Spanish notebook and the novel that started three years ago when I was still a student in Salamanca. It helps. I don't know exactly why it helps, but it does. It's like the internal dialogue can't keep up with the language switch, like it can't switch as fast as I can.

It keeps going in my head. Tells me that I don't want to do this or that, or that I should be doing such and such and such thing instead. Drinking helps. Meeting up with people helps. Watching crap television helps. And writing helps. Reading, surprisingly, only helps if I'm really concentrated, otherwise I find myself rereading the same line over and over and over again, all the time listening to my internal dialogue instead of reading the words on the page.

Why am I here? Today I was making a recap of who I was at seventeen and who I am now. She's a stranger! I mean, she's me, but... She's so different! She thinks she's so smart. And she's happy! Like, really happy. She's naïve (even more than me!) and she's never lived on her own. She loves her parents a lot more than she knows, and getting away from them will do her good. But all that doesn't matter, after all, she's not even in her last year of school. She's deciding between biology and physics, and she's toying with the idea of studying medicine. She still hasn't written "Un cuento de Chéjov", although the Russians are starting to seem interesting. She doesn't lie.

There are similarities: I still keep the same diary she did, with pretty much the same regularity, I am still a coward, and I still can't really handle my alcohol that well. I'm still lonelyish sometimes, but I try not to show it. I still love reading, and Stephen Jay Gould and Gerald Durrell are still some of my favourites (where natural history is concerned).

So what have I learnt in the intervening five years? The answer is not much. I've realized I'm not the best person in the world, I'm not always right and I'm not that smart. I've realized I know very, very little and I've come to the conclusion that most of us don't get the chance to change the world. I've become more realistic about some things and more idealistic about others, and I know for sure now that I don't want to grow up. Ever. And I've learnt to lie.