If the voices in my head are impossible to count, should I be in the loony bin? Writers beware, because …

If that’s the case, then I’m taking most, if not all writer’s down with me! Imaginary friends are the norm for most of us, so what if mine just never left, right? Sure, my “friends” evolved, they matured and grew, and often became sounding boards for all the major epic disasters during my life, like when my stocking decided to commit suicide, obliterating itself at my knee five minutes before I went up on stage in front of the whole school, and I hadn’t waxed … but that is another story, one that I will try and spare you from.

Numerous characters in your head are what most writers would believe are prerequisites to, well, writing, but it doesn’t necessarily confer smooth sailing for the creative act. I mean seriously, at least with real people you can, to put it bluntly, tell them to shut “the you know what” up, or you could simply leave, distance yourself from their nonstop blabbering, but what happens when those characters are a part of you, and you don’t remember sending out an invite?

The infinite voices in my head are incessantly determined. They will knock, claw, and annihilate my cranium until they are heard, and to top it all off, they don’t care about social nuances like timing or appropriate forms of communication. I may own them, but in the end, they rule, and worst of all … they know it.

I will often be found whispering to myself in an argumentative tone, begging, pleading for a moment’s solitude, a break of sorts, but they will, at every stage refuse to listen unless I pen their personalities down, afraid I presume, that their unique attributes will be lost to the world unless ink is sprawled firmly on paper. They don’t care whether anyone’s interested in knowing about them, their relentless selfishness and omnipresent character attributes prevent them from worrying about societal norms of being accepted. Their egos are insurmountably pervasive and unsurpassable in that they truly believe that they must be heard, that they must exist in the real world.

Sure, I may sound like a poster child for Multiple Personality Disorder, but the truth is I wouldn’t let them go, even if I could. Why? I am tempted to whine “just because”, but the fact is that they make up what I am, who I am. They form a chunk of the core that makes me interesting, or uninteresting, or simply stark mad to those around me. I just wish they’d have some off days and quit bugging me 24/7!

Yes, they’re like a class of two year old tantrum throwers who bombard my brain matter, and the few grey cells I am holding onto for dear life left within my skull, but they provide me with a innumerable source of entertainment that I carry along with me in my knapsack on this journey called life. Plus, they won’t stop screaming at me until I use that flashing cursor on my empty page to tell their stories.

So to use the words of Eminem, “I am nuts for real, but I’m okay with that … [because I] get along with the voices inside my head”.

Disclaimer: This post was penned by all of us/me.