I'm Totally Normal. I Promise! Okay, I'm A Little Weird.

Many of you would probably be surprised to know that I have very likely had a conversation with you that you don’t remember.

How is that possible, you say? Are you a hypnotist? Did you drug me? Quit being freaky, Rachel!

Well, you don’t remember because you weren’t actually a part of the convo. It was just my imagined version of you. That’s right – I have conversations with people in my head.

In fact, if I know you IRL (in real life), I’ve probably had a mental chat with you at least once. That’s how often it happens…while I’m getting ready in the morning, while I’m driving down the road, while I’m perusing the aisles at Target…

(Well, maybe it doesn’t happen quite so often now that I have munchkins constantly interrupting my thoughts, but you get the idea.)

Socially Awkward Penguin gets me.

I guess it’s just that when I start thinking about a topic, I imagine talking about it to whomever I think would be most interested in discussing it with me. Or I think about having a conversation I would like to have but probably never will. Or maybe I’m just bored and you happen to pop into my head. (Lucky you!)

These fictional heart-to-hearts can be brought on by any number of things – a dream, a recovered memory, a Facebook status, a random thought, or even nothing at all. Most of the time I don’t even pay attention to the fact that I’m doing it. But today I did, and it made me think.

I thought about how bad I am at verbal discussions and how I have a tendency toward social awkwardness, and I found myself wishing I could be as eloquent and verbose as I am in my own head.

I’m just not that cool IRL.

It’s probably another reason why I blog. Blogging is my way of releasing some of the internal that I’m not very good at making external.

But anyway, I guess this is my way of saying, Friends, I think about you a lot. You have clearly impacted me in more ways than you know because I carry you with me daily.

Luckily, I googled it (typical me), and despite the fact that it brought up several psych forum hits, I found out that having imagined conversations with people in your head is actually quite normal. (Phew, good to know!)

You probably even have conversations with me in your head. At least I like to think so.