Monthly Archives: January 2020

guided by voices

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This article about people without an inner monologue has come up in several of my social circles today, and it reminded me of something I should probably get checked out: I hear voices. Inside my head. Voices that aren’t mine.

Back to the article for a second. I’ve always had an internal monologue, and it sounds exactly like my blog reads. You’re basically reading my inner thoughts right now. How embarrassing for you!

Like most people, I have a “voice” inside my head that is how I process most information: anything processed by one of the 5 senses (that YOU know about) is narrated by this inner voice thing. It’s not necessarily a voice, but that’s a close word for it. However, I also have a wordless version of this that I assume is my intuition – sometimes I will look at something and immediately know. It’s like my brain makes rapid-fire shortcuts and leaps of logic that, thankfully, are almost always correct. This isn’t any kind of superpower, it’s like .. a heightened ability to troubleshoot rapidly. I assumed everyone’s brain was like this until I was like 35. I literally had to have someone tell me that no, I can do these things because I’m smart. Not THAT smart, obviously, but smart enough to figure out why your printer isn’t working. I am confident I will have a place of honour in the brave new world.

Lately – like, for the last year or so – I’ve been hearing voices. I should probably be alarmed about this, but I’m not – there is no demon dog telling me to kill people, no tiny angels or devils on my shoulder trying to influence me one way or the other. It’s not an intrusive thought, it’s just .. snippets of someone else’s train of thought. It’s like playing with a radio dial and hearing bits and pieces of another station’s content. I’ll be in bed, thinking my thinkie thoughts, when I’ll suddenly “hear” part of a sentence someone else’s voice entirely. The first few times it happened I was pretty weirded out, which I imagine is the normal response to hearing voices in your head. It’s become a common enough occurrence that I just go “huh. there it is again.” and continue on with my own dramatic monologuing.

It’s kind of hard to explain. Imagine you’re sitting on your couch, drinking a cup of tea and thinking about all the things you need to gather before you leave the house for the day. In the midst of these thoughts about the laundry, your keys, the package you need to return, longing for Angelica, missing your wife, you overhear a neighbour outside saying “I can’t wait for these tomatoes to come in!” .. except it’s inside your head. In someone else’s voice. Often, it’s not even a complete statement – it could be “then we went down to” or “if he’s not home by Tuesday” .. just random noise intermingled with your own train of thought. The voice is not familiar, and the thought is not a tangent or offshoot of your own.

So, that’s pretty weird. I shall handle it like I handle most other alarming things in my life: make fun of it, then ignore it completely! Haha I hear voices saying the most mundane shit possible! Who else but Kimli!

Seriously, who else? Is this a normal thing, or should I prepare a tinfoil hat?

everything is awful all the time

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We moved to the middle of nowhere almost two years ago, but I’m still on the mailing list for our old neighbourhood because frankly I like seeing what is collectively up their butts this week. Any kind of change to the area, regardless of what it is, has been fought against. Social housing? Horrible. Craft beer store? God no. Dispensaries? THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Halfway house for troubled teens? No, not THOSE children! New rental buildings? Might attract the wrong kind of people! New condos? They’ll all own cars and want to park them! It’s a never-ending litany of creative complaining.

This week, they’re railing against a series of high-rises the city wants to build along Hastings, where all the run-down bridal stores currently are.

Actual complaint from a resident of the neighbourhood:

News tonight confirmed people living on busy streets have higher probability of major illnesses, Parkinson’s, cancer etc.

But city councillors of Vancouver want to build many towers all along Hastings, Broadway etc.

You can’t live there because they might get cancer. That’s a new one!

Oh, boomers. You’re so awful.

microdose

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I’m microdosing my mother.

Wait, that sounds bad. I’m not microdosing her, I’m microdosing myself WITH her. Is that better?

Microdosing is taking small amounts of psychedelic drugs in the hopes of enhancing yourself without the full effect of the drug taking over. It’s claimed that this can “unlock” your brain, making you smarter or more creative or more able to concentrate. I have no real experience with this. My mother, crazy though she may be, is not a psychedelic drug, so it’s really nothing like microdosing whatsoever. I’m simply taking my mother in tiny doses. Just a little bit at a time. To build up immunity.

My mother is iocane powder.

I have a difficult time relating to my mother because she speaks in tangents and doesn’t understand a single aspect of my life outside of Ed and cats. We’re eerily similar in that aspect, although MY nonsensical rambling makes PERFECT sense and hers does not (shut up and let me have this).

To keep my sanity, I’ve been visiting my mother in quick bursts. I dropped in on Monday afternoon to deliver some things I brought over from the mainland. Last night, we went for dinner with her neighbour/friend, and tonight mom and I are going shopping. Small doses. I can do this. Just a tiny bit at a time.

 

you can’t go home again

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but when you do, everything looks weird and gives you belly pangs. Also, construction. So much construction.

I’m in Victoria for the week, cat-sitting for Friend Sue. I’m staying at her place while I sit on her cat, which is win-win because the cat has someone to simultaneously distrust and beg for attention, and I can work from Sue’s living room because there is internet. Add in some ice cubes and running water, and I am fully self-sustaining. I’m also playing Good Daughter and getting some mom visits in while I’m here, so in between sitting on Sue’s cat while she alternates between purring and hissing at me, I am being a productive January monkey.

Coming home to Victoria always gives me such weird feelings. There are so many memories attached to this place, and the overall bittersweet sense of longing clashes heavily with my free-wheeling “family is for suckers” nature. It makes me all thinky and introspective and tired (although that might just be the geriatric air quality here). I keep wanting to come to Victoria and have a Good Time complete with laughing and cupcakes and maybe some sparklers, but it never seems to turn out like that – I mostly just get sad, with an impending sense of duty. I’ve never quite figured out why that is, as no one really expects anything of me. Am I expecting it of myself? That I’ll suddenly wake up one morning and look forward to spending an extended period of time with my mother without turning into a petulant 14-year-old? One of these days I will surely become an adult about this, right?

It’s not going to happen this trip, though.

If you’ll excuse me, I have a cat to sit on.