Roger Alan

This is the longest I've went without seeing my boyfriend in close to a year. So I'm getting to know myself without interruptions (sans text) again. By that I mean I drink a lot of caffeinated drinks and spend my time having imaginary conversations with my friend Roger Alan. Who is also imaginary.

Roger Alan was originally two people when we first met fourteen years ago. Roger, who had black hair and was super intelligent. Alan, who had brown hair and was a knight errant. (I had a whole family of imaginary friends all with special abilities and back stories, but the ones who came through with the most detail were Roger and Alan.)

By the time I was fourteen I had decided that Roger, Alan, and the rest of them were actually spirits that inhabited the rather ancient graveyard behind my house. This would explain why I had less conversations with them as I had grown older. You see, when you are first born your soul has just came from something like the same plane of existence the dead are in currently. Therefore the younger you are the more susceptible you are to getting chatted up (minus pervy connotations) by the deceased. With notable exceptions of older people with open minds.

This theory of mine was supported by a lady who lived down the road from us. A devout Catholic lady who used to live in Mexico, she stopped when I was 3 or so (I was personally told the story when I was 13 by my mother.) to inform my mother that there was a confederate soldier sitting under a pine tree in our yard. That he was lost and that she should go out to the tree and tell him he was dead. Oh, and by the way, did we live near a graveyard? My mother did this without telling anyone about it, and nothing more was said. (For a time after hearing the story I was dead set that Roger was the ghost of the Confederate soldier.)

As I grew older and it became anathema to have an imaginary friend, I pretended that he was no more. When actuality I talk to myself and refer to the voice that answers back as Roger Alan in loving memory.

And when asked if I ever talk to myself I can honestly say, "No, I'm speaking with Roger Alan."