Talking to Myself

October 13th 2022

I still remember the first time I told myself an elaborate, highly detailed story and wished so desperately that I had written it down as fast as I told it. I had spent the better part of an afternoon riding a razor scooter in circles on the driveway of the house I grew up in. I told the story; speaking the words and thinking the thoughts of multiple characters simultaneously. I was twelve.

The older I got, the more I recognized this deeply engrained ache and long for storytelling. I started a personal blog in high school that I filled with angsty, depressing poems, shorts stories, music lyrics. It became a form of therapy for me. I wrote down the things that I felt and things I longed to feel. I wrote about my heartbreaks, my wins, my goals. I wrote down the things that I was not able to speak out loud, for talking to yourself is not how you make friends in high school.

I may not still be walking this earth, had I not learned how to talk to myself. Working through things in my head helped to an extent, but I never found peace in the burdens I held or the mistakes I made until I sat with myself and talked things through. When I found out my scoliosis had progressed further and required surgical intervention, my only coping mechanism was staring at myself in the mirror and, through tears, telling myself that everything will be okay. I found myself in this same place, inches from the mirror, several times in the years that followed. At my lowest of lows, I knew that it was my own self that understood best.

In Talking to Myself I explore what it means to discover the most authentic “you” in the midst of suffering. I share my perspective on chronic pain and depression, and the debilitating affects that is has on a young person’s life. I present the day-to-day of a young person in the United States living through a pandemic, the brink of recession and political unrest. I lay out my life with the hope of making someone else feel heard and understood. I am so glad you are here.

“It’s wonderful to discover my deepest feelings and values. It’s even greater to share my thoughts after they’re clear in my own mind.”

~ Liane Cordes on Self-Acceptance and Self-Knowledge