Grey Room
This was a monologue I wrote years ago for an online writer’s group I was a part of, which I unearthed again today whilst looking through some paperwork. As with most things I write, I absolutely loathed it at the time of writing, but looking back – able to pretend it was written by somebody else, I actually quite like it…
“There’s a window in the far wall. It doesn’t have a curtain, so there’s nothing in the way of the sun, but the light that comes through – it’s… different now. Older.
Those young men who come into my room – they laugh at me. Light’s just light, they say. Daylight’s just light, and there’s nothing toxic in my water, and the shadows don’t really stretch beneath my door at night. I think they’re in denial.
There’s memories. I don’t ask for them – it’s not like when you have to try to remember your name or your date of birth. Those things take effort – you have to search around for them, don’t you? These memories come without asking; they ambush me. Not that I dislike them – they’re quite warm and pleasant – and old. But I ache when I have them. I forget to breathe, and my arms tremble, and I want to run and run. I want to run back to those places in my mind.
When I was there, the first time around, I could experience it all – the warmth, the people, the air – without the aching, or the trembling. It was so much more natural. The daylight was different then. It had a different character then – a friendlier voice. It threw itself through the windows in the mornings, and it burned against the walls. It was younger, more vital, but it’s aged right alongside me.
Those men, they mean well, but they don’t understand – they’re too young. They’ve only known daylight as it is now. Cold and blinkered, callous and unfeeling. It sneaks in, breaks itself on the leaded glass – lies grey, in bits, on the floor.
I asked Father Mike about the memories today. There were people I loved there, I said. I said I wanted to be there again.
He nodded, but I don’t think he understood. I said, how do I get there? What doors do I go through? He said I couldn’t. He said that that was the past, and that all those times were gone now.
I said – gone where? And he said that it was complicated, that even philosophers and holy men didn’t know the answer, but that all those places, and things, and people don’t exist anymore.
I said, of course they exist – I see them all the time – how can I see something that doesn’t exist. I didn’t realise I’d raised my voice. I didn’t hear myself shouting. I think I swore at him. Badly.
‘Was angry, though, you see? I mean, he’s meant to be an holy man, a man of god. If he doesn’t have those answers then who does? I told him he was lying – that he knew – he knew the way back to those places. He was just pretending not to know, so as not to help me. He had a key to it all, and he wouldn’t share it with me.
He tried to calm me down. He said he had this technique – breathing in a special way to empty my thoughts. So they wouldn’t have to bother me any more. I told him to… I wasn’t very nice. I threw his bible at him, and told him not to come back. I wish I hadn’t said that now. I don’t think he will come back. I am sorry. Very sorry. I do. I do want him to come back. He’s the only one who has the key, you see…?”
