So you’re sitting there and wondering how you got here. And you remember a time when you thought a bit more of yourself. And you wonder how it is you got so tired. And what on earth you’re going to do about your life. About him. About her. Maybe she is fading smaller and smaller. Maybe he is standing on your chest. Or calling. Again. Maybe she is perfect and that’s the problem. Maybe he has lost the reasons. The ones you gave to him.
Can you recall where you began?
And what the point was anyhow?
Or maybe you’re happy to forget that part. After all, you’re here. Still breathing. And you can make a new day anytime you want.
Back when I was younger, before the waves came, before I lost a single thing, I knew all there was to know about love. With my clear, clear eyes, I knew I would know when I had found it. But if I’d known about the chapters. About how the list would change me. I might have never learned to dream at all. So when I reached the crossroads, I chose with my ridiculous heart (the least reliable narrator). And then I learned that love isn’t like needing a car, it’s like needing a cardiologist.
That thing that people like to say...the one about not looking back...I want to say be careful. Because there is no love without risk. And there is no wisdom without failure. And the fire in your heart is not a new one, but one that was there from the start, now shaped and tempered by the ravages. So, I say that it is better to remember. To know the ache by name and to ask her to dance. Because she is the girl who knew the face of love. And she hasn’t forgotten a thing.
Write the worst of it. Share what you can.
PREVIOUS ARTICLES BY AUDREY CEFALY
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4 Ways to Create Indelible Non-Speaking Roles for the Stage21 Things I Know About Playwriting
I wrote my first play twenty years ago. I wrote my second play one year later. Here are 21 things I learned in the year between the two.
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Audrey Cefaly's plays (Alabaster, Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, The Last Wide Open, Trouble) have garnered the Lammy Award, the Calicchio Prize, the NNPN Goldman Prize, the Edgerton, and a Pulitzer nomination. Her works have been produced at Signature Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Barter Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Florida Studio, Florida Rep, Gulfshore Playhouse, and countless others. Cefaly is a Dramatist Guild Foundation "Traveling Master," an Arena Stage playwright cohort, and a recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. She is published by Concord Theatricals and TRW