Written for a prompt on hitrecord.org.

I won’t tell you what my inner monologue has to say these days. That would seem to run contrary to the prompt, so I’ll clarify a bit: I’m not going into much detail on my current inner monologue because it is a dark place. Anyone who knows me will know what I mean.

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It wasn’t always that way. My inner monologue was full of movie ideas when I was six or seven – a child with a vocabulary of a teenager, an active imagination and few friends interested in hearing about any of it. That didn’t bother me back then. I rehearsed my lines in my head, rewrote my drafts, offered commentary on how I was doing. We had a lot to say to each other.

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I learnt quickly never to say it out loud though. I knew early on I was a bit different to the other kids, and certain behaviours wouldn’t fly with them, but it didn’t make me sad. Not yet.

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My monologue started to get angry when, once again, maths defeated my understanding. My flaws, my weaknesses, my deficiencies were starting to show and my monologue, like my teachers, hurled criticisms at me.

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Monologue, once my most jubilant cheerleader when teachers and other students loved my short stories, suddenly became a stranger.

Monologue, the one who had wondered if that man Stephen King (my dad was a huge fan, so he was the one “adult” writer I knew of) would like my stuff, called me stupid. A loser. A freak.

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Darkness crept in more and more as I got older and, it seemed, the world became ever more hostile toward me. Sometimes people would catch me muttering under my breath – monologue and I discussing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or dinosaurs or art or acting – whatever I had on my mind that day. What a weirdo.

Why are you always embarrassing yourself like this? Demanded monologue. I didn’t know.

You’re stupid, she said.

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As I sat on the classroom step alone during lunch break, a long time before things got bad, I asked a question monologue couldn’t answer at the time: why didn’t the other kids like me?

Later on, she had a whole list.

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Many years later, at 14, monologue asked me a question I couldn’t answer: why won’t you just kill yourself?

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She still asks. Sometimes I answer. But that’s between just me and her now.