Drowning in Reality

I want to run away.

I want to duck behind the curtains and disappear into the wings.
Call me when it's over, when it's intermission, if you need a prop or two.
But I don't want to be in this play anymore.
I want to quit.

I want to be absorbed into the porous vastness of society; I want to just be another face, another body moving in rythmic motion in a sea of people.
There's nothing special about me.
Stop looking.
Stop asking.
Stop peering into my all-telling eyes and wondering what's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong.
I'm just like you.
Pretending.
Laughing.
Holding my mask in front of my face so you can't see who I really am, what I'm hiding, what I'm not saying.

That's what I want to do. Did you know that about me? That I just wrote about living radically but I really don't want to?

As it turns out, I can't walk off the stage.
I'm running the lights
and the sound
and I'm prepping the actors and actresses ("Do you remember your lines?")
and I'm throwing props in people's hands before they run out to entertain
and I'm capturing images on my still camera and in my mind
and I'm handing out criticism
and praise
and touching up makeup.

Sometimes I'm more a part of this then what I want to be.

Let me run away. Let me disappear. Let me be obscure. Release me from the agonizing reality of this life; reality that makes bills and money and jobs and an argument over fried rice seem so insignifcant. If only those were the only elements in this play. I would give a lot for that to be true.

But it's not true.
Could it be any farther from the truth?
No.

Scene two is beginning.
I can hear the music.
People are scrambling backstage.
The audience is waiting in breathless, silent anticipation. They are oblivious to my cowardly soul. They probably don't know I exist.
My name is being called, yelled, whispered.
I'm needed.

I don't want to go.
Have I told you that?
I want to run away.

But.
If I do, you will never know the end of the story.
You won't know if Light wins against Darkness.
The good guys always win, right?
No, not always. Not in this story.
That's blasphemy!
No, it's reality.

I want to run away.
But I won't.
It would appease a temporary longing for peace.
But I would have to watch someone else finish my story.
Someone else would fill my shoes.

My name is still being called, yelled, whispered.
I will answer.