- for a whole year!
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If you just started this blog and want to read the earlier monologues, please
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: A few words about 'free' - all these monologues are protected under copyright law and are free to read, free to perform and video as long as no money is charged. Once you charge admission or a donation, or include my work in an anthology, you need to contact me for royalty info.
If you just started this blog and want to read the earlier monologues, please
scroll down for the previous days or go to http://www.monologuestore.com/ -click on the Monologue Mania button please scroll down.
To start at the beginning - Feb. 13, - click here.
For a list of the blurbs from each day, click here
Help a playwright and get more great award-winning monologues - MonologueZone.com
Thank you for your comments - and for liking and sharing this site
Monologue Mania Day #270 by Janet S. Tiger Caregivers Anonymous (Act 2 opening) Nov. 9, 2014
(See Day # 268 for the opening scene of Caregivers Anonymous - Wheelchair of Fortune)
Caregivers Anonymous
(for Act 2 opening of Caregivers Anonymous)
A monologue by Janet S. Tiger © all rights reserved
A monologue by Janet S. Tiger © all rights reserved
tigerteam1@gmail.com
(Act 2 begins as the people, drinking their coffee, eating cookies, gravitate towards their chairs. The younger woman who came in at the beginning is watching them, not really interacting with them, even though the others try to come over and talk with her. Franklin watches her, and as the others finish sitting, she takes the wheelchair and comes to the center of the group. She has a slight Southern accent)
Hello, my name is......no that's not important. I want to thank you all for bein' so kind and tryin' to get me to talk with you. I don't think I'll be comin' back again, but I do think you deserve to hear my story......which appropriately enough involves a wheelchair, but, at this moment, I see no good fortune in it, so I will not sit in it.....
(She pushes the chair aside and takes a deep breath)
My husband, I'll call him Terry, and I met in a small town, where he was stationed before he left for Afghanistan. We fell in love very fast.....and got married very fast. And then he left.....for a tour that lasted 18 months. I was faithful to him, I don't know if he was to me, over there, at first that bothered me, but the others wives told me that if I worried about that, I would waste all my worrying time!
He came home and he was different. Very different. He had seen things that he wouldn't talk about, except with his buddies. And then he went back, for another 18 months. The second time was.....easier, and harder.
And he came back all in one piece. My friend Angie said that was somethin' to be grateful for....and I was. But he now was very different.
I suppose he was sufferin' from that PTSD thing, but I didn't know much, and the VA is not that helpful.
(Deep sigh) He was so handsome in his uniform. And he .....still loved me. Whatever he did over there, he didn't run around here. That I could tell. But I couldn't help him through his private hell.
My friend Angie told me I didn't have to live like this. Her husband Chris, he was weird, too, and she told him to (imitates friend) 'Get help or get out!' And when he refused, she got out. With their kids. And Terry and I didn't have any kids. Angie told me it was better that way, easier to go.
We had some horrible fights.
After one, I knew that I was gonna leave. The next day, I was gonna call the lawyer, and be gone, back home, where at least my parents would let me stay until I could sort everythin' out.
He left that night on his motorcycle......does that give you a clue what's about to happen next? Well, I got the call at 3 am from the police.......but it wasn't his motorcycle. He got into a fight with some guys......three of them tackled him, and when he went down, he hit his head on a metal bar stool......it was not pretty.
He was paralyzed.....waist down. What a waste!
He saw me in the hospital and he was under all this medication, and still in pain, and he grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes and he.....(hard to remember)....he said 'thank you for comin, baby, I love you......'
How could I leave him? I have seen him through five operations, and four years of therapy. He can use a wheelchair very well, but.......(trying not to cry).......there's still somethin' wrong with him! And I can't take it anymore! It's not fair! I was about to leave him! And then, for some stupid reason, I couldn't let him face this all alone.....not after he came back whole, just to lose it in some stupid bar fight.....
The lawsuit - which was just finished! -gave him enough money so that he will not have to worry for the rest of his life.
But me...what about me? I can't take it! Who's gonna take care of me if somethin' happens? I don't wanna do this for another fifty years! I don't wanna live with a man who can barely talk to me without yellin'! A man who will probably never walk again.......God forgive me for sayin' these things! But if I could kill him and no one would know, I would do it!
(She breaks down now and the others come over and try to hug her, she steps away)
Don't try to make me feel better! I feel like shit and that's all I deserve after sayin' somethin' like that!
And you haven't even heard the worst part.....
(Deep sigh) I still love him......
(Blackout. End of scene)
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Janet S. Tiger 858-736-6315
Member Dramatists Guild since 1983
Playwright-in-Residence
Swedenborg Hall 2006-8
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