I was being interviewed, and I started to feel the way I feel when I’m having an MRI.
The people were nice. They’d come up to the house. We were sitting in my living room drinking coffee.
But I broke out in a sweat. My palms were clammy.
I thought, if I look down at my chest I’ll see my shirt bouncing the way it did when they squeezed me into that cold, fiberglass tube and I watched the thin fabric of the hospital gown bouncing up and down with the beating of my heart.
But later when the interview was published it looked like any other interview you’d read. The words were ordered and calm.
It was odd. It was as if something were missing, as if something were being left out–another voice, another character. I kept waiting for it to appear.
But it never did. There were just the two of us on the page, the interviewer and me, having a friendly, thoughtful conversation, the way people sometimes do.
Because that other character was inside me. That other voice was the voice that’s always inside me. The voice of The Critic. The Accuser.