Ben Havird

“Marielle had read a study recently that said some people didn’t have inner monologues. That their brains were free of the narrator that was so active in her own, never more so than in the quiet moments before sleep (when sleep came) and now (apparently) meditation. That they experienced emotion without coupling words with it. She wondered how they ever knew what to say out loud, if they didn’t say it in their own heads first, or how they composed an email, or decided what to order from a menu, or released the stress and anxiety that came with cussing people out silently to themselves. Letting go of thoughts only replaced them with a running commentary about how difficult it was to let go of them. A worry about empty spaces, and if her brain might collapse in on itself if it wasn’t running an endless narration about anything and everything she experienced, and what she might look like with a dented skull.”
― Steven Rowley, The Celebrants