18
Or, rather—here I am. I am in Rome, and I am in trouble. The goons of Depression and
Loneliness have barged into my life again, and I just took my last Wellbutrin three days ago.
There are more pills in my bottom drawer, but I don’t want them. I want to be free of them
forever. But I don’t want Depression or Loneliness around, either, so I don’t know what to do,
and I’m spiraling in panic, like I always spiral when I don’t know what to do. So what I do for
tonight is reach for my most private notebook, which I keep next to my bed in case I’m ever in
emergency trouble. I open it up. I find the first blank page. I write:
“I need your help.”
Then I wait. After a little while, a response comes, in my own handwriting:
I’m right here. What can I do for you?
And here recommences my strangest and most secret conversation.
Here, in this most private notebook, is where I talk to myself. I talk to that same voice I met
that night on my bathroom floor when I first prayed to God in tears for help, when something
(or somebody) had said, “Go back to bed, Liz.” In the years since then, I’ve found that voice
again in times of code-orange distress, and have learned that the best way for me to reach it
is written conversation. I’ve been surprised to find that I can almost always access that voice,
too, no matter how black my anguish may be. Even during the worst of suffering, that calm,
compassionate, affectionate and infinitely wise voice (who is maybe me, or maybe not exactly
me) is always available for a conversation on paper at any time of day or night.
I’ve decided to let myself off the hook from worrying that conversing with myself on paper
means I’m a schizo. Maybe the voice I am reaching for is God, or maybe it’s my Guru speak-
ing through me, or maybe it’s the angel who was assigned to my case, or maybe it’s my
Highest Self, or maybe it is indeed just a construct of my subconscious, invented in order to
protect me from my own torment. Saint Teresa called such divine internal voices
“locutions”—words from the supernatural that enter the mind spontaneously, translated into
your own language and offering you heavenly consolation. I do know what Freud would have