There has been a flurry of debate about whether people do or do not have an inner monologue. What none of us has, really, is an adequate vocabulary to explain what goes on in our heads, or convey it to others. We can’t grasp how others experience their inner lives, just as we can’t know what they see or hear.
Currently, though, my inner monologue is striving to bridge that gap by becoming an outer monologue. I have spent longer than usual – on balance, probably too long – alone recently, as various members of my family went away, and I have started vocalising the stuff that used to stay in my head. Talking to yourself isn’t necessarily bad (one study found it might help you find your keys, sort of, but talking to objects is revealing troubling things about me.
I’m nice enough when I talk to the dog, even though he is deaf and stonily indifferent. But when I moved on to inanimate things, I was alarmed to discover I am horrible to them. Plenty of people talk to plants, but not as rudely as me. “I’m very disappointed in you,” I lectured a sickly sunflower recently, then barked: “Come on, that’s pathetic!” at the raspberries, like a boorish gym teacher. The pest-ravaged brassicas came in for some egregious victim-blaming: “You must be doing something to attract them,” I said suspiciously. “Everyone else is fine and look at you!”
Indoors, I found myself addressing – well, bullying – the robot vacuum cleaner. “What the hell are you doing under the sofa? What would it take for you to do your actual job?” The useless dishwasher regularly gets a hissed: “I hate you and everything you stand for,” and last week I shouted at the shower: “I can’t stand it: you need to stop dripping or I’ll rip you off the wall.”
I thought I was the mild-mannered sort who would apologise to a bollard for walking into it, so this naked nastiness has shaken me to my foundations. What can the neighbours think? I’m taking some time for properly silent reflection.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
