Middle Aged - Drama Monologue

M I D D L E   A G E D

I've come to a place in my life where I am middle aged. When I turned thirty, and people did that thing where they like to make fun of you as if you were an old man, it rolled off my back. I was in the best shape of my life, living my dream in California. I did stunt work, I did photography professionally, and I boxed with guys much younger than myself, and came out on top nearly every time.

I recently blew out my knee boxing. That's when the realization hit me, as I laid on my side in that ring, grasping at my knee, trying to extend it. At thirty-six years old, that kind of injury ends any hope of continuing that hobby. The first in what will probably be a series of things I will have to give up on as time beats away at me like sea water worn wood. Eventually I will be nothing but deep ruts, knotted coils of flesh, brittle bones, and forgotten dreams. A pile of misery draped over a lazy boy in a room without lights, unable to sleep because it feels like something is missing.

At some point I will give up on whatever dreams I may have had for being a published writer of renown, and I will give my life up to servitude. Begging for the scraps off the president of the companies table.

I've gained weight. Heavier now than I have ever been. It's probably why my knee went out. I think about my weight daily. I think about, how even now as I write this, about all the things I need to do, but haven't done, and I forget about them the next day. If I am to die a no one, it will be because I felt like no one, and my weight will be The Sword of Damocles hovering over my head, never knowing when it will break it's tiny tether and kill me.

I had always wanted to write this. I tried many times to include so much of my life in the fiction that I've written, but it never felt right. It felt like a cop out to write about my life, and disguise it as imaginative. Like I could have plausible deniability for everything that had happened to me, every horrible decision I made, every person I hurt, every dumb thing that I did, while getting the same feeling of release when a massive weight is lifted from one's shoulders.

It isn't right. You have to take credit where credit is due.