Preparation Hex

This is the opening from my second monologue "Preparation Hex"

2:45

It's 2:45 in the afternoon when it hits me. I’m sitting at my desk at work and I cannot move. I know if I even try to lift a finger, I am going to start crying and I’m not going to be able to stop. 

Triggered by Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” playing on our office radio, my mind starts some kind of chain reaction and decides that this would be the perfect time to replay the entire breakup of Polly and I. It’s like a movie trailer that shows you way too much of the film.
Fade in: on the day before the incident, two weeks before Thanksgiving. Polly and I are holding each other watching "The Panic Room" on DVD.
Cut to: the next day. I come home and she is on the couch crying. “You want to move out? Why? You don’t know?”
Pan to: me sleeping on the couch.
Quick cuts: Thanksgiving and Christmas which are nothing for me. I'm saving every dime I can to find an apartment.
Fade up: on the empty basement studio apartment I finally find and put a deposit on.
Cut to: “Polly, I found an apartment today and I will be moving out on the 18th.”
“Oh my God, I just found a place today on my way home from work. I put a deposit on it. It’s on 20th Avenue.”
“Where on 20th Avenue?”
Whip pan: “That's my place, right there.”
“Really? That’s mine.”
Three doors away.
Jump cut: Polly and I get one truck and help each other move into our new places.
Multiple images: of Polly and I seeing each other almost every day. We make love more now then we did when we were living together.
The images shatter.
Polly is sick, fever of 103. I help her to the doctor and she stays at my place while she's recovering, and two extra months after she feels better.

Blend into: our trip to Atlantic City. My God, she is beautiful. We make love at the Holiday Inn.
Fade up: on my empty basement studio apartment. Polly has stopped coming by.
Cut to: two weeks ago. It's Christmas time. Polly comes over, first time I've seen her in months. We exchange gifts and then she tells me about Paul.
“Paul is just like you. You guys would get along great. I have never felt this way about anyone. He really swept me off my feet.”
Just then her cell phone goes off. It's Paul and at the end of that call she says: “I love you.”
I feel a tear streak down my face.
I am numb.
Oh my God, I'm still at work.
I go in and tell my boss that I'm not feeling well and I need to leave. I grab my stuff and I am out the door.
My caring, nurturing inner monologue takes over at that moment. “OK Bob, just put one foot in front of the other, good, good. OK now, take out your metro card, thatta boy. Now get on the train, good, good. Think about anything except the fact that your whole life is falling apart, good, good.”

Finally I make it to my stop, get into my apartment and fall on the bed. But I don’t seem to land. I just keep falling further and further down into a pit of despair.
I had done the same thing with my relationship with Polly that I had done with alcohol, sex, even acting years before. I submerged myself in it, and as long as that relationship was alive, I wasn’t a failure, I wasn’t a loser, and because of that, I loved her and resented her at the same time.
Being with Polly helped me squelch my father’s criticizing and demeaning voice in my head that I had tried for so many years to drown out in so many different ways. Without that relationship, his voice came back with a searing vengeance.
I was in bed for three days straight, crying about everything. It wasn’t about losing her, it was about feeling that I was worth absolutely nothing.

If you would like to read the entire play, it can be found on Indie Theatre Now:
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Play/preparation-hex