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She Used to Talk to Herself: A Story About Loneliness and Finding Her Voice
Listen to the full voice note above or read the transcript below.
She used to talk to herself when she was at home alone, or on the way to buy the pint of milk her mum had told her to get from the corner shop for her, on the way back, cleaning her bedroom, washing the plates—and she really liked it. She wondered if it was strange, but somehow, even as a child, she figured she couldn’t be the only one who spoke to herself.
At school, she was pretty quiet. Those stories just didn’t come alive in the same way.
There was never really a moment to tell them.
At university, she thought, maybe I’ll stop being the quiet girl. Maybe I’ll be the bubbly, chatty, cool girl. So she borrowed a persona from a friend she had had back home—
A confident white young woman in her early twenties who was really cool. In fact, she even borrowed her words: super cool.
And it worked, she thought, at least for a while.
Looking back now, she isn’t sure whether people laughed with her or at her. She only wanted to be liked. She only wanted to be friends with those people—to be cool enough to hang around with them.
But somewhere between lectures and late nights, they began to ostracise her. Suddenly, she realised they didn’t like her at all. By the final year, she was alone again.
It was painful. It hurt. But it was a quietness she was familiar with—one she could hold her own in, even though she was incredibly embarrassed.
As she grew older, she learned something new. Even when she did try to talk and be herself, people didn’t really listen the way she needed them to. They cut her off, changed the subject.
Sometimes even the people she loved most—the ones she wanted to understand her—couldn’t stay long enough to hear the end of her sentence.
So she decided to start saving her words.
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Now she remembers those thoughts she used to have as a little girl—how she would tell herself, these stories are for me only. No one’s going to sit long enough to listen.
And now she wonders whether that might be true after all. Maybe the words are how she listens to herself. Maybe by writing them down, she won’t have to be alone anymore—because then she’ll have someone to tell. A story that will listen if it wants to.
Maybe it sounds nicer that way.
Maybe it’s nicer to read a story than to listen to someone go on and on and on.
So she sits at her laptop, silent and soft. She smiles. She breathes. She opens the word-processing app and says, “Let’s tell a story.”
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