hello, good friend

I’m feeling a bit melancholy today. Maybe it’s the dreary weather. Perhaps it’s that this past Homecoming weekend was crazy fun, and now I actually have to buckle down and accomplish something. My current to-do list looks something like this:

Write word study paper for American Literature before 1900
Read Dr. Faustus for Medieval Renaissance Literature
Finish reading the play Fuenteovejuna for Spanish Peninsular Literature
Compose a monologue for Playwriting class

Before work this afternoon I attacked the fourth task: composing a monologue. The actual assignment is to compose a monologue from the perspective of an “other” in the midst of conflict. Up until yesterday I had determined to write it from the perspective of one of my jazz dance students – she’s Puerto Rican, and it would’ve given me an opportunity to incorporate Spanish. After discussing it with some classmates, however, I changed my mind. And my entire project.

See, I really wanted to write the piece about one of my closest friends who happens to be enduring some significant life changes. She’s been on my mind lately, and I know her situation better than I do my dance student’s. But something about making one of my girlfriend’s real-life struggles into a piece of theatre unnerved me. It seemed so impersonal. Almost heartless. Yesterday I worked up the courage to ask her permission. She’s a good sport – she agreed.

So this afternoon, while the apartment was relatively quiet, I curled up on my bed with my laptop to write my friend’s monologue. The experience was pretty surreal. I struggled to “become” her – to use her vocabulary, her phrases, to contain her personality in words. It felt like donning a character, adopting a new life. At first I was overly cautious. After all, I wanted to represent her story – her life – accurately. Once I resolved to stop using the backspace key, the words flowed easier. Only two pages of dialogue passed before I realized that I was crying. And not just wimpering crying – the full-blown, eyes swollen shut, chest-heaving, choking type.

Where did this emotion come from? How many close conversations had we had – she and I? I had never cried. Granted, she had, and I had thrown my arm around her shoulders, told her everything would be ok, yada yada, but I had never shed a tear. Yet there I was, penning her self to paper, and I was bawling. In some small, probably insignificant way I finally “got” her.

I suppose one can never truly walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Maybe writing a monologue about her life comes pretty close. There’s certainly a great deal to be said for empathy. And a great deal of burden-carrying to even get that far. But whatever happened between the typing and the tears, I understand my friend, even if only slightly better.