Monologue: Stay

I'm not tethered to this place, freed by the limitation of falling. There is breath that fills my lungs and alleviates my heart, there is a shaking of foundations that oysters up new birth.

I am free, I am calm, I am at ease.

I think I'll write a monologue:



I'm not playing this game anymore. I'm not chasing you like dogs allegedly chase cars. I'm not...wasting that much time on you. The hardest thing about this is that I'm not mad. A little annoyed, but not mad. I wish I was. I wish I could curse your name and fume to my friends. I wish I could despise you. Anger makes it easier to let go. It's easier to overturn tables and bite my thumb at you than it is to stay here.

But that's what I have to do. Stay. There's no one to blame when things simply fall apart. No one was wrong in us not being right. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt... This is the life I get to lead now, watching you roam with that harness on, safe and secure while I fall, watching you live and breath and experience all the things I'd hoped for us...all things I hope for with someone else if someone else would call. If anyone else would call. Because after you, no one's called.

The universe has a system of give and take, and often it all comes at once. One good opportunity is handed over and suddenly dozens more are at the door, but a week before all was nothing. The road led nowhere, all was vain and pointless.

You left and took it all with you. You unstopped the drain and everything the universe could have been handing me swirled into oblivion, vanishing from beneath my feet and between my toes. And I can't hate you for it. And that's the hardest part.

It's when you look back and see yourself as a different person that you know you've moved on. 

I never really had one of those moments. I had the experience of reading a journal or school writing assignment from early adolescent days and smiling at the immaturity and stupidity of that little girl. But I've also had the experience of reading something less than a year out of date and cringing at my youthful way of seeing the world.

And then I had this, reading words penned less than three months ago, and realized it's nothing to do with the wrongness with which I viewed the world in that space, but rather the difference with which I see it in this moment compared to then.

It's the disconnect, the Brechtian breech of the fourth wall. Those memories, writings, stories sound so distant and strange because I'm not the girl that wrote them anymore. I stopped reading the book for a few months and tried to pick it up where I left off, without reviewing context. I paused the movie for a day and came back to watch the end.

Alienation. 

That's the term. 

I felt that way when I wrote it. I believed those ideals when I scribed them. I see them as ridiculous or odd now because I don't look at life in those eyes anymore. Times have changed, my situation has changed, and my eyes have had to adjust.

Does this make sense? I feel I'm losing factuality in my vagueness.

I don't know if this is a thing, and frankly I'm too lazy to look into it, but in my creative writing class in high school, the teacher dedicated the month of April to poetry writing. Allegedly it's National Poetry Writing Month, or something. (That's the part I'm too lazy to look up. Go forth and discover.)

November is National Novel Writing Month, but this past November I resolved to merely write something every day, as my novel was not fresh enough in my mind to flesh out. So I did. I carried a notebook with me and wrote something every day, a practice I have for the most part carried on through these intervening months. With regards to April, I had an idea.

I've been writing a lot of poetry lately. So I'm not going to do that for April.

I'm going to write monologues.

A few months back I was searching for a monologue and I stopped by my blog, with monologues on the mind, and realized a lot of my musings are structured as theatrical pieces, which only makes sense when you consider what I'm wrapped up in constantly. I've written and performed a few monologues for school that have turned out quite well, and each time I've thought "Write more of these."

So I'm going to.

I don't promise to post them, I find I get more slacker-ish if I give myself strict requirements like getting on the computer to type a thing every day. But, undoubtedly, like I do with most everything else, when I write something I'm very much pleased with, I will most likely post it here.

So...yeah. I just felt like writing a blog post that was actually a blog post and not some sentimental/poetic/prosetic piece. 

Exposition

People are always saying you're the author of your own life, you write your destiny.

Yes and no.

Life is like a novel, life is a story, but if you were the author you'd know what was coming next. You'd know what course would get you from point A to point B. You'd be the one creating it. There would be no need for faith or trust or error, because if you knew everything--if you were writing your life--you'd know the end. You know what to avoid and what to strive for.

You're the author of your actions. You're the embodiment of a character. You are victim to traversing through a realm scripted by another and choosing and succeeding and falling as you may. You are lenient on exposition, exposition only the author can provide. You can convince yourself all you want that you know what's coming next, but how could you really?

This is not your novel. This is your chapter, your moment in a volume that will span the dawn of man to the demise of evil and beyond. Your part is as integral as the others, with regards to the furthering of the plot and the benefit of other characters. But fundamentally, you are all the same. You are all as unknowledgeable as the rest, you are all moving through space trying to pen something worthwhile of yourself.

But you can't.

Not without the author.



More or less I'm using a literary metaphor for God, if you missed it. To speak plainly, for I feel the inclination to do so, it occurred to me how little I know. I've been waiting. I've done what the author has hinted and I've stuck around; I've waited. This weekend I gleaned some information I'd been lacking for several weeks, information I rather considered vital, information that has brought me back to a state of peace or homeostasis. I was wondering over the idea of why it took so long for me to learn that, why those simple statements were spared from my ears for such a length of time.

And the word popped into my head: exposition.

In my acting class we're studying performance of monologues, and one thing the teacher keeps stressing is 'why now.' Why does this character need to say this now? People don't walk around telling their darkest secrets or spilling their hearts out or rampaging at a constant rate. There is something that has brought them to that moment. What brought it about? Why now?

I'm not the author here. I'm not the author and God doesn't take the monotonous path of foreshadowing in a Rowling-like fashion each pivotal moment of my life. He will answer me if I ask, He will extend a hand in help, but He is all knowing. He is Creator and Master, and He knows when to plant seeds and when to let truth bloom. He knows when 'wait' will suffice, and when exposition should be delivered.

How can I not trust this? How can I not trust that though I stumble in a whirlpool of menial things, my mind stretching far from the here and now, crafting ideals and hopes for puddles beyond my residence, how can I not trust He understands my story? How can I not trust He's mulled for centuries how to unravel my tale and deliver my potential. How can I deny Him the opportunity of instigating and witnessing so great a story unfold?

How can I deny the author the pleasure of allowing a character to fulfill her course and contribute to his novel as only she was meant to? How can I dare try to write something better?