Member-only story

The Two Voices Inside My Head

At least the voices I hear in my head, now, are mine and not his.

Wendy Cohan
4 min readJan 27, 2020
Photo by Dušan Smetana on Unsplash

There are two voices in my head. One says, “you are a beautiful woman in the prime of life, with a heart full of love. Someone will see that, sooner than you think.”

The other voice whispers, “there must be some reason you’re still alone.” It is suggestive and broad-spectrum, making sure to leave plenty of room for self-doubt in a variety of categories.

“No,” the good voice answers. “I just need to wait for all the kids to go off to college and the already-shaky marriages to fall apart.”

“Wait as patiently as you like,” the dark voice says, more forcefully. “There is no guarantee that any man is going to want to be with you.”

“I refuse to believe that,” the good voice counters, growing in strength.

Then the dark voice erupts with a cacophony of quite vicious insults:

“You’re too tall. You could lose twenty, or even thirty, pounds. You should invest in a facelift. Coolsculpting. Kybella. Let’s take care of that fat pad under your chin. It was a mistake to let your hair go gray. Why have you never even tried Pilates?”

“But,” the good voice reminds me, tenaciously, “twenty pounds ago, and four years ago, life…

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Wendy Cohan
Wendy Cohan

Written by Wendy Cohan

Author of character-driven women's fiction, short stories, and essays. Her contemporary romance, The Renaissance Sisters, debuted May 23, 2023.

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