Like Dreaming, Backwards
By Kellie Powell
Like Dreaming, Backwards is a series of monologues and scenes about the suicide of a young college student named Nell. Leah is Nell's mother. The play also includes monologues from an acquaintance, Yale, and her close friend, Natalie.
LEAH:
She had chronic depression, ever since she was twelve. Her father had depression, too. And her sister. And I was on antidepressants for a while, when I was her age. She was very high-functioning. She went years without any real incidents. She had control of it when she was in high school. And then, all of a sudden, things just... fell apart. She... spiraled.
I asked her to move back home, but she said no, over and over again. She was hospitalized last summer. But I really thought that she'd get past it. I thought, "It's just a matter of time before she finds the right medicine, or the right therapist... and things will go back to normal."
That day, we'd made plans to have breakfast. I called her, but she didn't answer her phone. I thought she'd turned it off and slept late, so I went to her apartment and knocked on her door. It wasn't locked. I went in, and... I found her lying on the floor in the kitchen...
Why didn't she come to me? I would have done anything for her. Anything. Didn't she know that?
