| Tip of a Green
Pen
I can’t hear myself think. It’s not that it’s loud in here or I’m
distracted. I JUST CAN’T HEAR MYSELF
THINK! I can feel the vibrations of my
brain moving and thinking but I can’t hear
the thoughts that are churning in my mind.
You think it’s weird that I’m talking about hearing my thoughts, but you’d
be bothered by it too. Everyone else
seems able to think and hear their thoughts just fine, some are a little too loud,
but my thoughts aren’t loud enough! Sometimes
I can hear a slight whisper but that’s it; you know that fuzzy sound you hear
when you hold a seashell up to your ear? That’s the loudest my thoughts get but I still
can’t get to them!
If I were to go insane, how would I
know that I’m crazy if I can’t hear my thoughts? It’s not that I want to hear voices in my
head but I don’t know what I’m thinking before statements and questions come
out of my mouth, appropriate or not. Most
people have what you call, ‘self-talk’ when they’re thinking and there are
words that jump around in their mind, creating a thought process, determining
what is proper to say and what is not. I
don’t have that. Well, I suppose I
might, but I can’t hear that thought process.
It’s kind of like trying to listen to someone on the other side of a
sound proof wall.
Emotions create an issue all on
their own. I start crying at all the
wrong times; in public, during class, when I’m making out with a girl
friend. Since I can’t hear my thoughts I
don’t have the ability to stop myself from thinking about things that fit the
situation. When I cry, people ask me
what’s wrong, and I just don’t know. I didn’t
realize this could be such a problem till I was in high school. I was chilling with some guys, and all of a
sudden, there were tears running down my cheeks. I was sobbing.
Of course it had to happen when one of my friends was telling me about
his most recent breakup. He thought I
was making fun of him and he beat me to a bloody pulp.
Sitting in class one day, my
teacher said, “Quiet down, guys! I can’t
even hear myself think!”
Some smart kid in our class
responded with, “Well, maybe you’re not thinking loud enough.” The whole class erupted with laughter, but
that’s no joke! It’s not something to
laugh about. If you can’t hear your
thoughts, there’s no way you can understand anything about yourself. Those kids just didn’t get it. All my friends went through those growing
processes of thinking about life, religion, sex, college, and future careers
but I could never join in these conversations unless my brain happened to pay
attention and start talking about my thoughts.
My biggest fear was that I would end up saying something that offended
someone and I’d lose all my friends.
Everyone says that to be in a
relationship, you have to understand yourself first. I don’t understand myself because I can’t
hear my thoughts. We all sometimes
wonder what other people are thinking. It
even drives us crazy occasionally because we want to know that they don’t have
the wrong idea, we want to know what they think of how we look, what we’re
doing, and their general perception of us.
Imagine that feeling all the time.
I don’t even know what I think of myself; let alone how I feel about
other people. Aside from judgments I
don’t understand anything about the way I function, things that make me tick,
my beliefs on certain topics or issues, or really even the kind of girl I
want. Attraction is all relative; I go for
the girls who make my heart beat fast, not necessarily those who fit my
expectations. Even I don’t know what
those are.
I had this girlfriend once. She was always asking me what I was
thinking. I told her I don’t know
because really, I don’t. I can’t hear my thoughts! This girl always told me what she was
thinking, which was kind of nice because then at least I knew what someone in
the room was thinking, but I found myself getting jealous because I never had
thoughts to share with her. One day, she
walked into my living room where I was laying on my old brown sofa, watching the
Houston Rockets kill the Sacramento Kings, and she asked me what I was
thinking. Of course I couldn’t answer
because I still couldn’t hear my damn thoughts.
She walked out my front door and screamed, “Don’t even think about
calling me!” Of course, if I thought
about it, I wouldn’t know.
I didn’t really care that she was
gone. I tend to go through girls quite
quickly because they start thinking I’m shallow and don’t know what I want in
life. Part of this is true, but it’s not
my fault. I usually don’t care when I
lose a girl because emotional attachment is just a figment of my imagination
that I can never quite grasp. Sometimes
I cry or get pissed off, but that’s just another day of my life that I go to
the gym and run a few laps or hit the punching bag.
When this girl left me, I was
somewhat relieved. She was so caught up
in her thinking that it drove me insane.
Everyday she’d come home from work and tell me about all the thoughts
that went through her mind. Half the
time she’d sit there wondering about some ridiculous theory she heard or a
religious principle she picked up from somewhere. I swear she was into a different religion
almost every other week. Oh, I hated
that damn pen the most. She had this
pink pen with a pink diary and every night before she’d even come to bed she’d
sit at my desk writing down all her thoughts from the day. Some days I’d sit for an hour just waiting
for her to put down that stupid pen. She
also wrote me these condescending notes.
Don’t forget to take out the trash, or Your briefcase is
already in your car, as if I didn’t know these simple things. Just because I can’t access my thoughts
doesn’t mean I’ve lost all my marbles. I
function fine I just don’t know what processes continue turning in my brain
while I work all day.
After I’d rid my apartment of
almost all the traces of her condescending existence, I stumbled across
something interesting. She left her
diary on my nightstand and I never bothered to return it. It was precious to her which was all the more
reason for me to hold it hostage. It
served her right for taunting me so much.
One night I was laying in bed, trying really hard to listen to my
thoughts. I thought that since it was so
quiet in the house I might be able to hear them, but I had no luck. Finally I got up, turned on the light and I
saw the diary, picked it up and found the pen that lay beside it. The next thing I knew, I was laying on my bed
writing on a clean page, when I realized that my thoughts were showing up on
the page. I learned how I truly felt
that night, everything in my mind poured out onto the page. It turned out, that her existence was so
contradictory to what I wanted in a girl that it was a relief that her lost soul
was out of my life. The thought of
calling her hadn’t crossed my mind even once after she walked out, and the more
I wrote, the more I realized, just how much I hated that fucking pink pen.
The next day, I bought a new pen, a
green one, the color of my bed sheets and bath curtain. I bought a green notebook too. My pen almost never stops now. Dozens of dry green pens pile in the bin next
to my desk. There are about fifteen
notebooks piled in the corner of my bedroom full of the thoughts from my days. They have become a catalog of everything I’ve
ever thought. For about a year or so I wrote
continuously for hours every day, penning down thoughts from my childhood and
adolescence. My briefcase would drop to
the floor and my pen would hit the page.
I’ve caught up to my current
thoughts and now I’ve reduced to writing about an hour every night, making sure
to get down every thought of my day. I carry
a notebook with me everywhere I go.
Small notepads litter my office, car, and house. Writing is my solution to the social
disconnect I have felt my entire life. Now,
with the tip of my green pen to a pad of paper, it is almost like I can hear
myself think.
A few years after I started
writing, she came back for her diary. “I
need to share some old thoughts with my boyfriend; something you could never
do,” she said to me. I found her diary
from beneath my heap of notebooks, scribbled my signature in green on the last page
where I had added my thoughts, and brought it to her at the front door. Handing it to her, she noted the pink pen
still attached with a ribbon at the top.
She walked down my drive way flipping through the pages of her diary and
stopped midway, calling back, “What’s this in green?”
“Oh, that’s something I could never
do.”
KKaur |
