There is something that goes on in my brain that increasingly worries me and makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with me, and I can’t seem to change it, so I thought I would just write about it here in my trusty ol’ blog and see if I can’t at least exorcize some of the stress I have been feeling about it.

For as long as I can remember, possibly extending all the way back to my early childhood (I can’t be sure), I have had a very deep compulsion to (in inner monologue) explain and justify whatever I am doing at the time to… well, someone, but that gets complicated too.

Usually, it’s whoever is in my life at the time, whoever I have last explained something to in the world outside my head. But I get the feeling that said person could be anyone, and that I am really explaining or justifying what I am doing to myself, somehow.

It’s a hard idea for me to get across, so I will try to give some examples.

Say I am playing a video game. Spontaneously, in my head, I will begin explaining just what it is I am doing and why in the game, exactly as if someone had sat down beside me and asked me what I am doing, or why I did what I just did.

Or, even worse, I might be in actual conversation with someone, and there is a lull, and my brain just starts justifying and explaining what I just said, actually interfering with my ability to keep up with the conversation and making me seem like I am not really paying attention to what the other person or people are saying.

I have only been consciously aware of this phenomenon for a couple of years or so, and until recently, the most I did about it was think to myself “Yeah, that’s kind of weird. Seems like a big waste of effort and a bit crazy to boot. I should stop that some day. ”

But I wouldn’t actually do anything to try to stop. I am not sure why, whether it was just plain laziness and procrastination or whether I had some sixth sense premonition of what I would be getting into if I did try to stop.

Because I have been trying to stop recently, and that is when the depth of the problem truly showed itself. I can’t seem to stop, and all trying to stop has gotten me is a lot of frustration and stress from being confronted with something my brain does that I apparently have no control over.

I keep saying to myself “Why are you doing this? Who are you explaining yourself to? There is nobody here, nobody who needs to know!” but it just keeps happening, so for now, I am trying to just accept it. But it is hard.

It just seems so pointless. Sometimes, it even leads to my becoming stressed out if I can’t explain myself to myself well enough, or even the effort itself seems painful when I am not feeling one hundred percent mentally together. I would dearly love to save myself the energy and effort and especially the splitting of my mind this phenomenon entails.

But that does not seem to be an option. And maybe that is a good thing, I don’t know. Perhaps all this internal verbalizing over my entire life is a vital part of what makes me a writer. It’s like constant low-level practice, and expresses that deep down feeling that one has something to say that is the mark of the writer.

And were I all super cool and in control of myself, if I was really the one in charge inside my own skull instead of being, at best, chairman of an ill-tempered and decadent board, I would simply accept that this is part of Being Me and relax about it. And who knows, maybe writing all this down will help me towards that goal.

But for the moment, I can’t help but be spooked by the discovery of this bifurcation of consciousness that I don’t want and I cannot seem to stop.

Why is it there? Is it because I was such a lonely child that I made a sort of amorphous invisible friend who was always keenly interested in what was I doing, unlike the people in my real life who never paid the slightest attention to me?

If so, it’s almost unbearably sad.

And it seems like small justification indeed for constantly persecuting myself.

My god, I need help.