Monday, June 14, 2010

I don't blog much these days

But I'd thought I'd post the monologue that I wrote/performed for my English final back in May. You might like it.

Genevieve Wright, 23, found dead 4:23 a.m.
APPARENT SUICIDE


THE INTERROGATION:

JAMES: I know why you have us here. Because she was our friend right? We loved her, knew her, should have seen the signs, done something to stop it. But you don’t understand... None of us ever knew her. She spoke two different languages--on the outside we could understand her but underneath? Beneath the surface?... We couldn't understand that. So we went with what we had and everything was fine. She was fun, lively, charismatic, the life of the party type, you know? But she was moody. We could be having the time of your lives and then... Suddenly, something would change... She’d get real quiet and go off and sit to the side...We never knew what to do when that happened. We’d just leave her alone and later she’d come back and things would be fine again... But it was always...different after that. Like, she shut down and didn’t restart right or something. But none of us never said anything about it. Because things were fine when they were fun so we just let it be.
I saw her that night. At Wayne’s party. I called her earlier that day to ask if she would be there. She answered the phone and she sounded...terrible. So far away and hollow, like she was talking through an empty Coke bottle or something. She said she didn’t know for sure but she would think about. I got to the party and I was a little surprised to see her. She wearing this bright blue dress and she sort of stood out so I saw her right away. She ran up to me and dragged me out onto the dance floor. And we just danced all night like maniacs. We had so much fun....Before we knew it, the night was gone, it was getting late and things started to wind down, so we decided to go outside and wait for our cab.
She was sitting on the sidewalk, holding a drink in one hand, her phone in the other, then she looked up at me and in this real quiet voice said, "Do you think I'm an island?" I told her "No, of course not." I told her that she had friends. You can’t be an island if you have friends, I said. She didn’t say anything after that. She just looked away and stared off until the cab came. And then she was silent the entire ride. We dropped her off at her apartment and when she said goodnight she had that look on her face. I’ll never forget it. That look. It haunts me... It was her eyes. It was her eyes that really got me... There are so many things, so many things I should have told her.
I still think about that question everyday, what I would say to her now,
I think about it and now I see it. She wasn’t an island. She was chained to an island. She was the ship tied up in the rocky harbor. But again and again, she tried to escape it. She dived into the ocean and tried to swim away and live with the people on land. But she never got far. Not really. Because there was something inside of her that was always holding her back... So maybe she was just tired okay? That’s why she did it. She was tired of fighting and never getting anywhere, tired of being all alone. And every time she tried to tell someone about it, tried to reach out for help, something was always lost in translation. She was tired of it all. I saw it but I didn’t understand it then. I saw it in her eyes, the waves piling on top of her. She was drowning. And all she wanted... all she wanted was someone to wake her up, someone to tell her that she was strong enough to fight it...She was a sinking ship and we couldn’t do anything to stop it. We couldn’t save her. Don’t you get it? There was nothing we could do. We couldn’t fix her. And now.... now she’s gone.

9 comments:

  1. wow. i love this. nicely done.

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  2. I like it. Kind of haunting, in itself.

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  3. Hey :)

    I posted your interview today... :)

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  4. This is beautifully written, it's really charge emotionally

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  5. just passing by your blog and i have to say i LOVE it. please come drop by mine too when you have some time and maybe we can follow one another. =)

    Persis
    http://www.onestylemile.blogspot.com/

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  6. this is really lovely and well written.

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  7. This is amazing, I'd love to see it being performed... I really liked the fast-pace of it all.

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