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People tend to think the worst in the hard times. Am I ever going to be alright? Will I get cancer? What’s going to happen to me? How am I going to enjoy life when I perfectly know that I’m screwed up? We try to put a smile on our faces, but in fact it’s only a shadow of a smile. We put our masks on and pretend everything’s alright. However, deep down we know nothing’s alright anymore. Even a nice dress or an amazing pair of shoes won’t make us feel better. I've put it wrongly. It would help but only for a moment; later on it would be just another pair of nice shoes that takes space in our overstuffed wardrobe.

How to get on with life then? Is it even possible? There might be moments when we get so occupied with other problems that the big ones seem to fade or even disappear. How long for though? We perfectly know that they are never going to go away even if we try running away from them for as long as we can. What should we do then?

If I ever get the answer, I’ll make sure to let you know… 

Love/Death

I must confess.. I was trying to write something but every time I made an attempt I realized it was either bad or just complete bullshit. So I'm leaving you with two monologues I wrote last year for theatre classes. They were written on the themes of love and death using different speech patterns.

Enjoy!

MONOLOGUE 1 – LOVE

People say love is the cure for everything. Is it really? Isn’t it more like an eternal struggle to please the other person? Or perhaps trying to get to know them without putting enough effort to know ourselves first?  What about making mistakes? Should they be forgiven? Or maybe just forgotten? They should definitely give us a lesson. But do they always do that? Why do we listen to other people so much, instead of listening to our own hearts? Don’t they know what’s best for us? Don’t they give us signs when we actually meet the right person? Why do we ignore them? Why do we seek advice from others whilst we could get the answers ourselves? Wouldn’t it be easier to just follow our hearts once? Without unnecessary thinking, prejudices and dependence on others? Perhaps we would stop hurting people this way?

MONOLOGUE 2 – DEATH

I wasn’t really sad when my cat died. He was old and getting grumpy. I think it was his time already. My family wasn’t in grief for long either. We bought a new lovely kitten a week later. It just didn’t move me at all. A month later my granddad died. He was in pain for a long time. I didn’t cry. I thought it was the best for him. My family was in grief. My mum was in a total mess. At the funeral I was holding her, so she wouldn’t fall on the ground. I didn’t feel anything. Just the same kind of emptiness I’ve always had. I just lived my life after that. Two months later I went to the doctor. They run some tests. A week later they told me I had a brain tumour. Untreatable one. Something crushed in me. I couldn’t stop crying. I realized that I am going to die…

day like... always?

I wake up at 6am, turn off my alarm clock and try finding a little box with medicines I need to take. Found it, yay! I drink some water and accidentally spill it on the bed, merde! I put the mug back and try falling asleep again, which to be honest is not hard at all. I wake up two hours later, finding it difficult to open my eyes and discovering that I’m going to miss my bus. I dress in a hurry. There’s no time for breakfast but I can still put at least some make-up on. The bag is already packed, that’s a good thing. I take my phone, plug the headphones in and run to the bus stop. I have 5 more minutes until the bus comes, a cigarette then. The bus arrives in the city centre. I run to my classes just to discover that there’s no one there. Awesome. I wait about 20 minutes. Still no one. I decide to go back to my uni halls, have some breakfast and watch one of the many TV series I follow. After 20 minutes I get there, have some breakfast, decaf coffee and afterwards another cigarette. I hope the other class is going to take place according to the schedule. An hour and a half later I get to the city centre. There’s still no one. I finally decide to go to ‘l’acceuil’ to ask what’s going on. They say the tutor has changed the room the day before and I have to go somewhere I have no idea how to get to. Nice. I fucking love how this country is organised… I finally get there and it occurs it’s a practical class, wtf… I’ve thought they only do the boring theory here. The best is still ahead of me. After an hour I discover there’s an exam… the next day. I have to sing, which I truly hate because I’m extremely bad at it, and do some performance together with it. I panic. What the hell am I going to sing? I finally find quite an easy song but there’s still the performance left to do. ‘Je suis dans la merde’. Eventually I manage to think of something but it’s far from my brightest ideas. I watch some other people’s stuff. It’s good. Why didn’t I think of any of that? I go back to my little piece. My brain is going to explode from that much thinking. We finally finish at 6 pm. I’m tired and the only thing I can think of now is sleep. I get home, eat some ‘petit beurre’ and fall asleep. I wake up at midnight. Fuck, I still have to think of some ideas for the exam. I ask a friend for some help and walk her through my ideas and my plan. I go to sleep again, only to find myself experiencing a sleep paralysis. I wake up terrified. What the hell is wrong with me? Somehow I manage to fall asleep again. I get up few hours later, drink my decaf coffee and prepare for the class. As I soon discover the 3 hours break has been replaced with an hour one and we’re having another class straight after the exam. Exactly what I needed.  I pass the exam despite being completely ignored by the tutor. Saying ‘It looks nice’ isn’t really helping, you know? It’s not like I don’t have a clue what theatre is, but apparently the Erasmus students are not even worth trying to be cared for. Thanks very much for being so supportive. I talk to the other students; I smoke, and talk again. It’s nice to finally connect at least a bit with them. I go to the other class and try not to fall asleep as it’s boring as hell. I go home and fall asleep immediately. I wake up and eat something as I need to be careful with my eating habits. I check Facebook and some other silly stuff in the Internet. I fall asleep only to meet my sleep paralysis friend again. I wake up wet and scared as hell. It really is far from funny. I try going back to sleep but I can’t, I’m too terrified of this thing happening again. Finally I manage to do so but it’s not enough to finish my translation homework and go to the classes. I wake up at 6am to take my medicine and fall asleep again. It’s 1 o’clock. I’m still feeling tired. I go back to sleep and find myself waking up in the evening. It’s like the last three days have been taken out from the calendar without me even noticing that… Can I go back to sleep again though? Spring hasn’t arrived yet so I can still enjoy my winter sleep ;)

She...

I started it last summer and got back to it few days ago. Enjoy!

'And what does she think she’s going to achieve? Does she think I’m going to speak with her like she’s my bff? If I’ve ever had one… She knows nothing about me, my life and most of my problems, and yet she still thinks she’s able to fix me? Right! FIX me? Is this even possible? Am I ever going to be normal? What’s normal, by the way? Smiling insincerely to everyone? Saying ‘I’m fine, thanks’ even if I feel like I’m going to burst out either of anger or sadness? I’m not even sure if I want to be ‘normal’. Everyone’s putting so much pressure on me. They think that something’s wrong me. ‘Look at your sister’, they say, ‘she’s happily engaged, soon to be married, she’s just graduated from university and is going to have an amazing life, and you?’. ‘I’m not her’ that’s my regular response. I know I’m different and difficult to deal with. I hate people who talk all the time. My problems are my problems; I don’t want anyone else to know about them.

So I’m lying here on this really comfy couch, the only good thing from my Monday’s visits in this land of lavender hell. God! I cannot possibly imagine why did she think this colour and this horrid smell are going to calm down and relax the patients. I hate the smell the most. It makes me feel nauseous and dizzy. I can hear some mumbling but it’s so unclear and I feel amazing being so high in the air, almost like I was a bird. Free. Careless. Not bound to any conventions. I feel the sun shining on my face and water splashing on my cheeks while I approach the water surface. It feels so real. Wait, the water is too real. Suddenly the magic disappears. I flied away once again and now I’m back in this ugly lavender room with my therapist standing over me, checking if I’m conscious. I’m back. But does it make any difference? I’m sitting silently. Unwilling to say anything else except from ‘I’m fine’, ‘No, you don’t have to call the doctor’, ‘Yes’… I like that she’s not pushing me to talk like everyone else does. She knows that I’m able to speak and I do when I feel like it. It just doesn’t happen very often, but she got used to it, unlike my previous doctors. They wish they could have read my thoughts. I got used to yelling, shock therapy. Nothing’s helped. It just left me number that I was before. She’s nothing like them, but still I hate these Monday’s visits. My parents expect some sort of miracle every time I leave her office. They don’t understand that I just don’t want to talk, don’t want to be like my sister.

I used to have a boyfriend once when I was about 16, but as soon as he realised that I’m not all cheerful and talkative, he left me. I wasn’t surprised and didn’t cry like all the girls in my class would’ve done. I just didn’t care enough to be bothered. I remember the feeling when I first went to school, surrounded by all those children and their parents. So many of them cried and wouldn’t like to let go of their mothers’ hands. I found it pathetic. I was 7 but I felt older and wanted to be left alone being able to live in my own world. No one understood it back then, and no one understands it now. It was my mum who dragged me to the therapy for the first time. I was 14. I didn’t talk and didn’t seem to care about anything. My grades were fine but I only did what I had to do. I think that my mum just wanted me to be like my sister. Normal. She thought that therapy would change me into another version of Sarah. I could have seen the look of disappointment every time she looked at me. As for my dad, he wouldn’t even look at me. I was the ‘freak’ in the family, a bloody freak in this lovely, normal and wealthy family. They wanted to change me so much that they even made some sort of project out of it. They wanted to cure their little Katie. They wanted to make her normal, like everyone else. But I wasn’t a project. I wasn’t ill. I was just different. They couldn’t understand so they sent me away. They thought it would help. It didn’t. I was still the same, fucked up Katie.'

merci, ca va bien...

I must confess. I haven't been here for a long time... I've been trying to write something, but there were always better things to do.

Now there's time for some of my writings. Don't worry, I'll describe my Erasmus life soon ;) 

Although there's not much going on to be honest. 

 Written for Devising Theatre class. 

In winter the pool was frozen over for weeks. I was staring at it through my bedroom’s window, hoping the ice would break. I couldn’t stop staring… it was the only thing I was sure that will happen. Sooner or later, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that it had to. There was no other way. It has been the most certain thing in my life so far…  

They said I was the lucky one. Was I? Perhaps they were saying about my physical condition, few scratches, bruises and a broken leg. Scratches and bruises will disappear within a week; broken leg will take some more time to heal, but still not that long. Physically I should be fine. However, no one said anything about my mental health. I’m pretty sure they think I will be alright as soon as I get back home. But is there anything I want to go back to? Is there anyone except from my cat…? No one said anything about that night, about the accident. They left me alone. Not only the doctors, everyone. I’m completely alone now, with perfectly flat stomach and no one beside me. 

new beginnings...

So... I wanted to create a little space for my writings. It's nothing serious, just some monologues I had to  write for my Drama classes. After some time I've realized that I quite enjoy doing it, so I started writing more and more. There's not many of them at the moment but there will definitely be more. Everything depends on the inspirations so be patient ;)

So below is the first one I wrote. Enjoy! :)

I have never been a patriotic person, unless you count sport. Not football, of course. Everyone knows we’re bad at it. We were good back in the 80s, weren’t we? I’m almost sure it was the 80s, but never mind. The thing is that I always wanted to leave, somewhere better, somewhere with better opportunities, better start in the future. Patriotic speeches or even my national anthem made me laugh... How could we have destroyed the ‘thing’ our grandparents and great-grandparents loved the most? How could we have become so dependent on others when our ancestors fought so hard for freedom?! I just can’t understand why did my country, that suffered so much for centuries, sacrificed so many people, fell down, just to get up even more powerful, let the snakes in… WHY haven’t we noticed IT earlier?! WHY haven’t we reacted earlier?! We should have done something a long time ago, instead we were just waiting for things to get worse and worse… Our ancestors are definitely turning over in their graves. We’re nothing like them. We’re not brave enough, strong enough and fearless enough. They risked their lives for their fatherland, to make our generations’ lives much better, much easier. And look what we’ve done with it? We let the snakes in. They’ve almost destroyed us. Now we’re trying to get on our feet again. We’re trying to fight, to get back our lost pride, to get rid of the remains of communism that is trying to rise again. Hopefully we will be smarter and stronger this time. It’s not Russia or North Korea, it’s Poland for God’s sake!!!