sabaat

[sabaat]

❝ MARY: Are you trying to ruin your life?

HER: Or is my life trying to ruin me? ❞

- Yerma by Simon Stone

[sabaat]

❝ MARK: Listen. I want you to understand because. I have this personality you see? Part of me gets addicted. I have a tendency to define myself purely in terms of my relationship to others. I have no definition of myself you see. So I attach myself to others as a means of avoidance, of avoiding knowing the self. Which is actually potentially very destructive. For me - destructive for me. I don’t know if you’re following this but you see if I don’t stop myself I repeat the patterns. Get attached to people to these emotions then I’m back where I started. Which is why, though it may seem uncaring, I’m going to have to go.  ❞

- Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill

[sabaat]

whirlpools

the noise is like an everlasting whirlpool. the words and even the punctuation swirling around and around and around and around in my head until it switches to another whirlpool. of other words, or songs, or noises. just an endless swirling of things, twisting and turning, never emptying. it’s like when you were a kid in the tub and you tried desperately, so desperately to start one. and your hand is going and going and going, your finger cramping, just to see if you can do it. if you finally got the technique down. and eventually sure, one comes up. and by the time it does, that sense of accomplishment feels earned. you’ve got one. now you can get out of the tub and move on. your fingers and toes are wrinkly and the bathwater is getting cold. all the bubbles are gone. that was the one thing holding you there. but these whirlpools are consuming. my brain throbs with the words. echoing as it swirls around, changing as i start to forget what was said. maybe that’s not what they said? maybe they meant something else? what else? shift. a song lyric, just one, over and over and over and over. it hurts sometimes. it hurts to be reminded of a whirlpool. my throat gets tight and my head starts to hurt. its worse when i’m alone. when i’m alone it continues for hours and hours and sometimes they overlap. the distorted noise in my head gets louder and louder and louder until i have to move. i have to shower, or cook, or look at something, listen to something, write something. something to distract from all the noise. but it can’t be silent. there has to be more noise, or it gets louder and louder and i can’t think, i can’t breathe, it crowds everything else.

the whirlpools are never happy. they’re hurtful things. the song is never pleasant. the words cut and slice. when the whirlpools get to be too much, i can’t help but sob. they drag it out of my chest, they squeeze tears from my eyes. and then they continue. then they keep going. even as my nose gets red, my chest gets tight, my eyes droop from the strain of being open. as my body tightens and tightens and tightens until another sob is brought on. like a rubber band that won’t stop being pulled and snapped back togehter. each snap hurts more than the last. each snap makes everything harder and harder. it never loses it’s elasticity. it never breaks. it just keeps pulling and snapping. pulling and snapping as my mind is thrown around in circles. the words going faster and faster and faster until i’m dizzy and disoriented.

and then suddenly it stops. it shuts off and i’m left shaking. breathless. like i’ve been punched in the stomach and kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked and suddenly they’re gone. it’s gone. and there’s no time to be grateful, because in an hour or two it’ll be back. i’ll be caught in the whirlpool and dragged through the water harder. though sometimes it doesn’t feel like water. it feels like wet concrete. drying wet concrete. and i’m being dragged through it and there’s barely any time to come up for air.

i get scared when it’s silent. because i never know when it’ll start up again.

[sabaat]

❝ HIPPOLYTUS: I know what I am. And always will be. But you. You sin knowing you’ll confess. Then you’re forgiven. And then you start all over again. How do you dare mock a God so powerful? Unless you don’t really believe. ❞

- Phaedra’s Love by Sarah Kane

[sabaat]

❝ ABBY: Anyway, they’re all based on a dream. The house, the kids, the dog; the happily-ever-after. That’s what hurts when you lose them. That’s what you lose; the little dream you had.

STU: You lose the person.

ABBY: No you don’t.

STU: It’s losing the person that hurts, not some dream.

ABBY: No, because you don’t use the person. If we split up, you won’t lose /me/. I’ll still be around. What you’d lose is - our possible future. ❞

- Stiching by Anthony Neilson