Letting The Other Voices Speak

Last night I couldn't find the can opener.  I had looked in every utensil drawer, the dishwasher and tunneled to the bottom of the dirty dishes in the sink.  The cap'n has been gone for two weeks and the dirty dishes are out numbering the clean ones 3-1.  I finally opened every drawer in my tiny kitchen and found the can opener nestled among the dish towels.  Then I finished fixing my drink

and put the bowl of ice that I keep in the freezer on the floor in front of Mr. Stanley's dish.

Early dementia setting in? Quite possible.  Drinking again?  Hell, no!!!

It's these voices in my head that won't shut up and let me concentrate.

You see, I have this running monologue going on in my head whether I'm drunk or sober.  I guess everyone does.  You do, don't you? It's not just me that can't quit listening to my own self speak, is it?

These last few weeks, up here all alone in my cabin, it's the characters in my book that occupy my head.  Yeah, I'm still writing a book, but at least it's the same book and not another abandoned pile of scribbled notes to add to the piles of fledgling manuscripts I have stuffed in every drawer and cranny around here.

It is so refreshing to have other voices occupying my brain space these days, voices that have new things to say.  Good things to say.

For too long, an embarrassment of years, I had the same voices saying the same things, over and over and over and.....

"God, why did I do this again?" "Never again." Okay, just one."  Okay, just one more."  What the fuck, who cares?"....

I'll stop there, but I was just getting started on the  deafening monologue that played out day after day.  Most of you know that song by heart and can sing along.

Then, for awhile, there was a siege of different voices saying, "You can't do this."  "Just have one." "You can handle it this time." "You don't really want to live a life without booze, do you?" "What kind of life is that?" "Boring!"  "You don't want to turn into one of those people, do you?" "Come on, just have one."  "No one will ever know."  Blahdee, Blahdee, Blah, Blah.....

Then other voices started speaking up, they'd been there all along and now that the booze manifested voices were dying a slow, albeit lingering, death, this was their chance to say what they'd been waiting to say.

They said things like.  "Wow, look at that sunrise. Thank you, God." "You're strong enough to do this."  "You're amazing." "Look at you!"  "I'm so proud of you."  "OMG! I love those shoes."  "I think next fall I'll visit France." (I'm really going to do this one.) "Life's too short."  "I want to do it all." "I can do this." "You could be the next Danielle Steele." (Cringe.)

The new voices speak of possibilities and promise, chances to be taken and things to be discovered.

Finally there is room in my head for them. 

That's why I'm now able to hear the hero of my story, Blade, explain to the heroine, Sassy,  that he's sorry that he slept with her twin sister, Ilean, the one who'd lost a leg in a tragic mud wrestling accident years earlier. 

"I thought it was you," Blade swore on the family trailer park, but he had to admit, he could tell there was something missing.