I'll share with you the monologue assignment we just completed. We had to write from two versions of our past selves.
THE OVERLOOKED
I am the overlooked one. The one they ignore most of the time, or belittle when I do come back in their line of sight. My parents are too old, too sick, too selfish to care about me. I am not encouraged in school, although I am expected to get good grades. There is no “Good Job!” or “Way to Go!” waiting for me when I get an A on an essay or an exceptionally hard test. There is no discussion of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I am not even given a choice when my parents divorce as to which parent I’d prefer to live with. I get stuck with my mother – the functional alcoholic, I discover later, although growing up, this is just the way Mom is. I am not given the choice of living with my father, losing his battle with lung cancer the Tuesday of the week of Thanksgiving the year I turn 13. Some part of me accepts this through three failed marriages, a myriad of failed relationships, until I am with a man who strikes me so much of my mother that the “Aha!” moment comes, and I choose not be overlooked any longer.
GETTING TO KNOW MYSELF
The advice-giving side of me says “Finally!” but there is that nubbin of fear of letting go of the familiar, of being alone with myself. Eighteen months go by as I learn to love and accept myself, to value myself, to begin to realize my dreams and visualize what I want, really want, for my life. There are struggles not only internally with my own demons who fear the unfamiliar, but also with the outer demons disguised as friends and family who fear the change in me might incite a change in their own lives. They carry on the ignoring and belittling behavior espoused by others in my prior life. Some who knew me before accept the change and our paths move forward. Those who fear the changes fall away, and I deal with the grief of loss as I struggle to keep my face towards the sun. After eighteen months with my new self, I finally have the confidence to seek a mate again.
