I was on Facebook with my girlfriend, Mary Anne Spiers. We were in the middle of an emotionally-heavy dialogue.

Me: But Mary Anne. How come you never message me on here or on Twitter? How come it's always me. Or how come you never reply to any of my tweets or posts?

Mary Anne: This again Logan? I DO reply to those. I replied to many today. So I don't know what you are talking about!

Me: You only replied to one! I sent like a thousand tweets today, trying to get you to respond. And how come you didn't comment on any of my Facebook posts?

Mary Anne: What? You didn't write any! I checked! That's how I know!

Me: How come you didn't post anything to me? Or message me?

Mary Anne: Logan. You're lucky that I'm putting up with this. Most girlfriends wouldn't!

Me: I just love you so much, Mary Anne. How come you can't see that.

Mary Anne: *sigh* I love you too, Logan. I guess I'll try harder but you are really being unreasonable.

Me: You know that I post tweets just for you and sit there waiting for you to reply. And you never do. Do you know how much that hurts?

She didn't respond for some time, so I sent another private message elaborating on my line of thought.

Me: Then I tweet another one since maybe the previous one wasn't to your liking and do the same. Just sitting there. Every minute that passes while you don't respond, my heart hurts more and more. Then I keep trying and trying, tweeting more and more just waiting for your reply.

She still was being silent, so I continued with more of my spiel.

Me: You're hurting me, Mary Anne. I'm in pain. Don't you even care?

I sat there staring at the glow of my computer screen. My eyes were locked onto it, just hoping for her to message me back. I'm a jock, even though I'm a babysitter, so I don't cry. But my lips were quivering and my eyes were threatening to spill over. But the more hopeless it seemed, the more obstinate I became. Then my resolve broke and I finally gave in to the idea that she most likely wasn't going to resume this online conversation. So, I began trying to will it to happen. I tried to will a reply from her to appear. I then began blinking rapidly and felt a strong sense of despair setting in.

This hurt too much emotionally, so I bolted up from my chair and flung myself onto my bed.

"How come she doesn't love me," I said to myself in my head with my face buried in my pillow.

Then the other voice in my head piped up, "You know that you're smothering her, right? You need to stop being so clingy and needy. She's been way too accomodating to your neediness. You need to appreciate her. Most girlfriends would not put up with that."

"She doesn't love me." I whined. "She replied to three of Kristy's tweets today and Kristy only made four. I posted around twenty tweets and she only responded to one. And that reply was probably just out of pity because of my complaints to her about not talking to me enough online."

"Yeah. That probably was a pity-tweet. Like I said, Logan, you are being way to clingy to her. You're putting her off, big time. That's why she doesn't want to talk to you that much."

"But how come she wasn't talking to me that much in the first place? Before I brought it up to her? Can you answer that?"

"You mean, before you started bothering her with your whining about not getting enough attention from her? I don't know. I think she was, but you just wanted more. I think that she gave you a lot of attention or at least enough but you were just too greedy to be grateful and content with it."

"Oooohh," I groaned in my head.

"You need to back off with all of that, Logan. You might run her off too much to the point where she breaks up with you. Then you'll get even less attention from her. A lot less."

The internal dialogue of my two inner-voices seemed loud in my head. So much so that I wasn't sure if people around me could hear it. I opened my bedroom door and peeked out to see if anyone in my family had possibly overheard anything or if anyone was flat-out eavesdropping. I'm always on the look-out for any hint of someone having caught wind of my thoughts. After having allayed my fear for the umpteenth time about my internal dialogue possibly being audible, I decided to get started on my homework.

The next day, I showed up at Mary Anne's house, unannounced at around four o'clock. She had a Babysitters Club meeting at five-thirty. She said that she didn't have a babysitting job that day, so I just took my chances and showed up at her front door. (I asked her at lunch. I keep my needy tendencies hidden when around her friends or other people.) I wanted to avoid her father, so I came pretty early in the evening.

I was standing in her living room.

"Mary Anne? Are you busy tomorrow?" I asked giving off an anxious vibe.

"I have a babysitting job after school."

She sounded like she was trying to avoid spending alone-time with me. It made me feel persistent. It made me want to chase her.

"How about Friday?"

"Uh, I'll let you know."

"Saturday?"

She closed her eyes for a whole second which seemed to me like the world had just paused during the interim and held its breath - or was it just me.

"Maybe," she said giving me the vibe of pulling-away.

"Mary Anne. I love you. I just want to spend time with you." I said pleadingly.

She went over to the couch and plopped down on it.

"How come you don't want to talk to me? I want to talk to you." I said with a frown.

Then the other voice in my head chimed in, "You are being too clingy, Logan. Back off. Sorry about that Mary Anne."

I started to think about what my other voice said to me in my head but then I halted in my tracks.

"Why were you just talking to Mary Anne?" I asked it in my head. "She can't hear you."

I looked over at Mary Anne. A smittened-look had washed over her face. She was smiling and her eyes were shiny. She then reached over and grabbed my hand.

"That's okay, Logan-Two." she said. "But let's talk about us. When are we going to do things together? How come we don't talk that much?"

I looked at her feeling alarmed and confused.

Then I heard, I guess, Logan-Two, in my head reply, "How come you don't like him? He really, really likes you. He would probably do just about anything for you."

Didn't I just THINK all of that, I wondered? Weren't all of that dialogue just thoughts? Isn't that other voice just an internal one?

Mary Anne wrinkled her nose.

"He's way too needy, like you say." she said flirtatiously and with a come-hither tilt of her head. "C'mon, I really like you."

She was rubbing my forearm. Normally, I would have been super-elated but now I was feeling ambiguous. I liked her touching me in such a sensuously pleasurable way, but was she actually doing it for someone else? Was she showing affection towards another? Am I being cheated on?