buckets (NHB Modern Plays)

Someone I went to see, and they. Told me to make lists. Things that are wrong and things that I’m grateful for. And I’m sure it’s a good technique for some people but… One. I don’t – I can’t – I’m sick, basically, and I don’t think I’m going to get better. And the world is so. I mean at any given moment millions of people are suffering, really actively suffering, starving and ill and being burnt and scarred, and we all just carry on, we know what’s happening but we ignore it, we occupy ourselves with trivial little problems, and then – then we go on about living good lives and everyone’s just so selfish, if you stop and think about it it’s sickening and once you realise that how can any of us live with ourselves?

feel I can carry on with… Someone

It’s just after midnight and I’m standing at the end of the platform at the train station. And this is the

last thing I’ll, these are the last words I’m ever going to say. I hope you can see me, there isn’t much light this far down but it’s the only place away from the cameras, well apart from this camera, but. I mean this is the new one it’s meant to have enhanced night-vision recording or something. Probably a bit of a waste, with hindsight, getting a new phone, but my contract was due for renewal and to be honest I just wanted to know what it was like. Which is actually pretty depressingly similar to the old one once the novelty of a few new features has worn off why am I even talking about this? Anyway it’s quiet so at least hopefully you can… It’s quite nice here actually. Quite peaceful. There you go. Like I say it’s just after midnight so the last train’s gone and now it’s just the fast trains that pass through here on the way back to the city. And I do feel bad. For the person driving the train and the people on it, some of them anyway, the ones I’d have liked, and the police and ambulance and whoever it is that has to – (The sound of an approaching train.) That’s a. It’s early. Or the one before’s late. It must be the one before because they’re never early. I mean I worked this out, this is pretty premeditated, I don’t know if that helps but… but I haven’t said what I want to say. Look I’ll have to stop a moment to let it pass. Because it will be too loud to – (The sound of the train passing.) Quite exhilarating actually. Standing this close. The sound and the speed. The way it pushes air into your face… So I’m leaving this phone as well as my wallet which contains identification. Here on the platform next to where I… And now I’m going to explain why I’ve made this decision. Why I don’t

feel like a barrow of earth. I feel like an industrial-strength bag of garden rubble, all the pebbles and twigs bashing into each other inside me and loose dusty soil clogging up my lungs nose mouth every pore of my skin. I feel like I have leaking sandbags over my eyes. I feel like twenty-seven caterpillars have crawled through my ears into my skull and made cocoons in the folds of my brain, so everything’s muffled and nothing can get anywhere there’s just traffic and congestion and my thoughts getting lost among all the cocoons and eventually they’re going to hatch into moths a hundred moths fluttering about inside my head and that will be the point when, that will be the point when –. I feel like my skin is made of tree bark. I feel like crying for hours but I feel like all my tears have dried up leaving only salt. I’m made of salt. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to walk

I feel like a sack of potatoes. I feel like a barrow of earth. I feel like an industrial-strength bag of garden rubble, all the pebbles and twigs bashing into each other inside me and loose dusty soil clogging up my lungs nose mouth every pore of my skin. I feel like I have leaking sandbags over my eyes. I feel like twenty-seven caterpillars have crawled through my ears into my skull and made cocoons in the folds of my brain, so everything’s muffled and nothing can get anywhere there’s just traffic and congestion and my thoughts getting lost among all the cocoons and eventually they’re going to hatch into moths a hundred moths fluttering about inside my head and that will be the point when, that will be the point when –. I feel like my skin is made of tree bark. I feel like crying for hours but I feel like all my tears have dried up leaving only salt. I’m

You just don’t want me to grow up. You don’t want me to have the experiences everyone else is having. You’re actually stunting my growth by not letting me go, do you realise that? My emotional growth my person growth. Everyone else is going to have this experience and I’m not. It’s all they’ll talk about on

Monday. They’ll all be different, they’ll be changed by it, and I’ll be stuck behind. I’ll be a retard, a cripple, a failure. I’ll turn into the sort of person who has no friends and sits on their own at lunchtime and goes to the library and spends maths lessons drawing weird pictures of people being dead or with arms missing or plotting how to blow up the school yes I’ll be that kid who gets guns and grenades and goes mental one day and goes into school with a backpack full of explosives and just starts shooting up everyone, kids teachers it doesn’t matter because the whole world is fucked and then saves the final bullet for their own brains and then they find all these books and writings in his bedroom and also Nazi Swiss tikkas on the wall
Swastikas
And they trace it all to this moment where you stopped me devel

oping the way other children are developing, stopped me socialising, stopped me gaining emotional intelligence and empathy through ex-curricular interactions with my peers and engagement in contemporary popular culture and instead consigned me to a life of solitude and video games. I’m going to go and play the most violent game I own where all you do is carjack and drive-bys and shooting grannies and puppies and I’m going to play the angriest music I can find, something I know you hate, and you’re going to wish, wish, wish you’d let me go

You look so sad.
I feel sad.
But you were happy a second ago. You said. You said you were really happy.
I still am. But I’m so happy I’m sad. Because when I’m this happy I know this is the happiest I can feel. And I know this moment isn’t going to last for ever even though I want it to. And I’m only going to feel less happy afterwards. And even recognising the fact that I’m happy, and thinking about the fact that the moment isn’t going to last, is making me less happy. Because I’ve already ruined it, just by thinking about it.