Tag: 365 monologues

yeah. i guess you can call it a fragile male ego. you can say that in a room with two, three dozen people in it, sure, because your words have meaning here. while i sit here, numb, chest taken by depression to the point where i’m wondering if i can get a gun easier and faster at a pawn shop than a gun shop, yes, you can tell me my sadness is a symptom of my fragility, and you would be right. because no one ever said that depression isn’t selfish. it’s very selfish. it steals a person from the world and cocoons them in their own self-doubt and numbness. it is in essence selfish, self-centered, and self-destructive. but here’s the thing, lauren: i know you. i know you well enough to know that you have these same issues. you’re just better at hiding them. so when you call me out for my “fragile male ego” do you want me to tell all these people about how when you’re sad you drink two bottles of wine and scream-sing in the bathtub for two hours? do you think every person at this restaurant deserves to learn about the weird high pitched girl voice you use when you’re talking about your depression? judging by your expression, no, nobody here does. and yet they all deserve to know about how my “ego” is so “fragile,” which, by the way, it’s not, lauren, I’m FUCKING DEPRESSED. i don’t have an ego to begin with. so fuck you and the fuck the horse you rode in on. [takes the plate of food] i’m taking this home and you’re paying for it.

joe was, i don’t know, six foot, six foot two, maybe a hundred and eight pounds. kind of a big guy, muscular, you know, he was a farm boy so he always had this big broad shoulders and arms from baling hay and such. and i … i saw him grow, you know? i saw him age, i saw him go through high school. so this accusation, it just doesn’t make sense. also, i’ll tell ya, he was on the football team in high school, the varsity team in his senior year, he was a linebacker and he’d come home from games with bumps and bruises. he’s broken his arm, not from football but from skiing. i saw it, i was there, it was up on brundage, he hit a tree, his arm caught the tree trunk and it broke his arm. i mean i saw it, saw him get in the ambulance, met him at the hospital, i saw them set the bone, and i don’t think robots have bones, mack. so i don’t know. this all seems really sketchy. i know people are scared of bots and all that but joe was no bot, so why’d he get killed, mack? i’ve never met a nicer man in my life, just a down home type of fellow, ever since he was a little boy. senseless that he was killed, just senseless. joe reynolds was a lot of things, a lot of wonderful things, but he was no robot, you hear me? and you can quote me on that in your little newspaper.

honey bunches of oats. motherFUCKING honey bunches of oats. give me a better cereal. i fucking dare you. maybe you’re a purist, maybe you eat cheerios or goddamn rice krispies. you’re a coward. maybe you’re a diabetic from eating lucky charms or cocoa puffs. but is there a cereal out there that perfectly balances sweet and savory better than honey bunches of oats? NO THERE IS NOT. the only thing i can think that comes anywhere close is golden grahams, but those are still too sweet. (fucking delicious, but too sweet.) so you come here into my house asking me for some cereal, which i am happy to give you, but then you have the GALL to BALK at the idea of honey bunches of oats, the most delicious of cereals, crunching happily between your teeth?! you come into my house…?! i can’t believe this bullshit. get out. get out of my house and don’t come back until you can respect MY cereal!

it’s like …

it’s basically like …

like you’re … in a dark room. a pitch black room, that you’ve never been in before, and you’re fumbling around for a light switch. and nothing feels like a light switch, and you’re moving your hands around in the darkness, all along the walls, you can feel the texture of the paint, but you can’t seem to find that raised plastic with the little nub in the middle. and as you move your hands around you brush up against this thing or that thing and since it’s dark you don’t know what it is. eventually, you can’t find a light switch or the door or anything, so eventually you just give up and in order to stave off insanity you start feeling the things in the room. you’re trying to make sense of the things in the room. is that a shirt? am i in a closet? what is that thing, what is this thing, you know. soon you’ve taken all these amorphous blobs in the darkness and you think you know what they are. that’s a shirt, definitely, it’s on a hanger. that’s a toy car, like an RC car. you think you know everything. but you still can’t find a light switch, or a door handle. you can’t find a way out. and now that you think you know what everything in the room is, you get a sense of what the room is. it’s a closet. it’s a basement, whatever. you’re certain of it. how could you be wrong? you smelled everything, you touched everything. and now you’re here, alone, in this room, no lights, no sounds, no door to open, no windows. pitch black. and you’re just there. and it’s like, “well now what?” you know? now what? what’s the next step? maybe you scream, maybe you scream at the top of your lungs and bang as hard as you can on the walls, just scream until your throat is hoarse, until your arms are bruised. but nothing happens. maybe you sit and think about shit. but nothing happens. you’re just alone in a dark room you can’t escape, no matter how hard you try.

that’s how i feel. almost every day. and see, the days i don’t feel like that are like when there’s just the quickest flicker of light in that room, like dim candlelight, for just a second, but it illuminates the room enough that i can see that i was wrong about everything. that wasn’t a shirt, it was an old shawl. that wasn’t a toy car, it was a, i don’t know, a toy dinosaur. but i was wrong. and now i have to get that light back, because i want to be right. i know i won’t get out of this room but at least i can be right, at least i can know about the room i’m stuck in. so i wait. and then another flash of light, and i take a mental image of another object. and then i wait. and wait. and another flash, another mental image. and that’s pretty much what my life is like, when i’m not depressed. a brief glimpse into a well-lit room, in between months of waiting in the dark.

i wish i could explain it to you. the problem is, depression is such a generalized term — i’m depressed, i’m sad, i’m down et cetera — but there’s this insane fluidity and nuance to it that’s hard to explain in the moment. every time i try to wrangle why i’m depressed i end up roping a different reason, all valid. it’s about you though. about me dealing with you, i mean. you haven’t done anything to me besides ignite a small fire of affection in my heart that i am trying desperately to fan into flames. that in itself is kind of the issue, that you’re on a much higher level emotionally than i am. this depression makes me feeling like a burden, about feeling like i’m damaged goods, that there’s some guy out there who’s better for you than me. that’s a trigger point. the fact that you seem put together, happy, well-adjusted, always full of boundless positive energy, whereas i’m focused on the negative and sad shit. that’s a trigger point. and then sometimes it’s just really tiny details. like last night when i texted you that i didn’t want to go to the show and you just texted back “okay”, no punctuation even. you always use punctuation. you always use exclamation marks, especially when things are good. so when you just send me a word all i can think is, “she’s either busy, or she’s upset.” and i could ask, but then i would be a burden–you see how this can spiral?–and this illusion of confidence i seem to have gets blown away like morning fog in a spring breeze, revealing not san francisco so much as the pungent sugar beet factory stench of nampa, idaho during a week-long inversion. and all of this snowballs into a really deep depression, resulting in trips to the corner store buying whatever terrible junk food i can find. ice cream lately. it’s not pleasant, and i’d rather hole up in my dark bedroom than subject you to it. is that how relationships work? i don’t know.

people put me on a pedestal sometimes. they think i’m this great person but i’m not. i’m not. that’s not self-deprecation, that’s fact. none of us are so great as to be put on pedestals. we are all equals with special abilities but we are all human beings with blood and a heart that beats until it stops. none of us are worthy of being idolized, and we should all be treated as peers, as real people, as people who have real feelings and troubles, people who win oscars but also take horrific IBS-related shits in the toilet, people who paint beautiful landscapes while high on cocaine. we’re not perfect. that’s the beauty of the human race. my depression stems from not being worth the pedestal i’m put on, about having to force confidence because people expect it from me. rather than just being able to be myself, i have to be this larger than life figure because i literally am larger than most people, taller and bigger. but i can’t sustain it. i can’t sustain the high energy you have and that makes me depressed because why do not have any fucking energy? even when i work out and eat well, i’m still at like a 6 when you’re at a 10. you can bring me up to an 8. you should take that as a compliment.

at least i’m talking about it. with a therapist, i mean. and i’m trying to be more open in general. it’s hard because people tend not to care. i don’t blame them, we’ve all got shit going on in our lives. fuck, maybe i need antidepressants, i don’t know. but i do want you to know that when i hole myself up it’s only because i don’t want to bother you, but i would like some kind of acknowledgement that you care. i don’t mean that to sound so harsh, i just mean … i spend a lot of time alone, and when people say they care it means a lot to me, because it reminds me that i’m not alone. that’s all. you mean a lot to me and i don’t want to lose you because i distance myself from people when i feel sick. i’m working on that. i’m … working on it.

it’s killing thousands of people, whatever this mutation is. it’s gotten into the bloodstream and can be transmitted through simple skin contact. in fact it acts like it doesn’t work until you touch another human being, then, there’s something about the transmission that activates it. that’s why i’ve got the gloves, that’s why i’m clothed head to toe. they, the government, they advocated this, you can see the funding in earmarks in hundreds of bills over the past twenty years. after MK ultra was dropped they started funding biological warfare, they developed cancer, sean, they developed cancer. they can kill the president with a heart attack, what makes you think they wouldn’t be able to do it through a simple handshake? these people are plotting the downfall of america, one cancer at a time. so. you can forgive me not giving you a hug. i know it’s been a while but i value your life and i know you value mine, so let’s not give each other malignant cancer.

you’ve got all these people running down the street. just a mass of people, running away. now, where you gonna go? you gonna go with ’em? you gonna run against ’em, see what’s going on? who knows. it’s a snap judgment. it’s a, you gotta just trust your instincts, sure, but if you run away, knowing what you know, you’d be doing all these people a huge disservice. so you gotta go back, you gotta go against ’em, run in there and help. maybe you die. maybe. thing is, your consciousness is the only one you know. we, in this country, we idolize individuality, you know. we worship ourselves. ain’t nothing wrong with that, as far as i’m concerned. you worship whatever you want so long as it doesn’t interfere with my life. except … when it’s just you you’re worrying about, the plight, uh … empathy, that’s it, empathy goes out the window. so all these people running down the street and you gotta remember that they got lives, they got families, they got people who care about them. and people care about you too, but you’re just one person. so if you die then these other people live. you gotta put yourself in their shoes, you gotta think like them, think about what they’d think about. and you … look in their eyes when they’re running, you look at that terror in their eyes when they’re running, and that’s when you know. you gotta go in. you just gotta go in.

judy, you’re dressed inappropriately. take that skirt off, i can see the bottom of your ass for chrissakes. and that god awful nose ring, why do you still wear that thing? do all women these days want to look like bulls? why would you do these horrific things to your body? this is something you’d want your mother to see? dressed like a whore and a cow at the same time, i’ll be damned. oh and before your “rebuttal” about how overtly sexist i’m being, please remind yourself that not only am i woman, but that i’ve been one for thirty more years than you have, so whatever thoughts you have regarding “progressive” ideology have already been thought, over and over again, before you were born, before i was born. hell, the minute mankind realized there was no need to worship god we started taking our clothes off. but those thoughts, that ideology, is one thing. that’s up here [taps head], in your easily led brain. down here [motions to crotch] is a different story. you can’t stop a man from wanting that. it’s biological. there’s a switch in his brain that makes him pursue that, because he’s got all this jizz up in his balls and if he doesn’t use it, it’ll go to waste and then it’s like he’s going to waste. do you see what i mean? some women may have told you that you can use your sex to lead men on and get them to do things for you. well, you can, but you don’t need to dress like a whore to do it. you give a man an opportunity to fuck and he’ll take it, no matter what the cost, because his dumb animal brain just needs to pump that semen into a woman’s body. i know you think there’s a higher brain function there but even if there is, that animal brain trumps it every time. i’m all for feminism and women’s rights, i just also know from experience that man’s goal in life is to fuck, and if he sees you in that skirt with your ass hanging out like that, he will pursue you and try to fuck you. you try to prove me wrong, judy. you go right ahead.

honey, the jam machine broke and now there’s jam all over the basement floor. like, up to my ankle. it’s a sticky delicious mess. i think the cat’s in there somewhere. i’m sorry. i thought it would work, i honestly did. well, it did work, technically. technically this is all jam. but the pressure, the pressure was too much. your vinyl collection is ruined. the couch is ruined. your cat is probably dead. i mean it was an explosion, i think. everything down here is ruined. it’s all over the walls, the ceiling. it smells so amazing. i’m sorry, i’m sorry. but it smells like strawberries! sweet sticky strawberries. i kind of want to lay in it. i’m going to lay in it. honey, i’m going to lay in it and then i’m going to clean it up, okay? i think i owe this to myself. you’re more than welcome to lay in it with me. you’re always complaining about stuff being “boring,” well what’s more exciting than laying in a pool of strawberry jam? [he lays in it] oh this is tremendous. this is exquisite. this is heavenly. you should come in here. it’s still warm from the machine, i know that sounds weird. [meow] oh the cat’s alive, thank god.