Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing—
For Hecuba!

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing

Am I a coward?
Who calls me “villain”? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

‘Swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal.

In 2006, I was living with Clare, and having one of my infamous breakdowns, but at least this one ended differently. I had been binge watching The Office (BBC) during my days, while I pounded keys for yet a company that refused to recognize my value even as I acted a fool.

When I can’t convince people of the value of what I do, I make myself the most obviously firable employee for all reasons except my work. Then, when they inevitably bring me in for discipline, I tell them outright to fire me. They never have. They still miss my point, perfectly made.

Martin Freeman’s character, Tim, had realized on his 30th birthday — mine was coming up — that he didn’t want to spend his time working in a mid-range paper company. The similarities in my own life were too strong to ignore.

I pounded my fists and raised my voice at Clare, who had never earned my ire, not once. I raked my face and racked my brains. I searched and scraped my soul for how to proceed. And I found it.

The one thing in my life that I consistently looked forward to was teaching stage combat (which I called “fencing”) at my high school alma mater. I would pursue that. That realization lead me to the SAFD.

Now, nearly ten years later, my unyielding depression’s mumbles echo painfully in my ear, as I have been accepted to the exclusive, prestigious, and mettle-testing Teacher Certification Workshop. I have arrived at the doorstep of my past self, with weak knees and a dead heart. And a compass, broken, with the arrow pointing up.

“Here is where it all leads,” I say to myself. “It’s still the only thing you look forward to, but that doesn’t mean what it used to.”

Come for me, G’mork! I am Atreyu!

G’Mork is a servant of the Nothing, that great expanse where existence itself is wiped away. Death is the obvious analogue, but in this case, it is the death of the spirit, the death of the imagination.

I think people forget why suicide becomes so appealing. The person conflicted about that nonexistence often struggles not only with pain, but the feeling that they ALREADY do not exist. The world, the universe, even their closest friends appear indifferent to their existence, and it feels selfish to boost one’s own self-love to the point of importance, so… why not? What other choice is there?

And this striking rebellion, when hope seems lost, when his best friend, Artax has succumbed to the sadness, represents that glimmer of hope, that realization that all of existence amounts to simply being, being what and who you are, whatever the consequences.

Since we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather die fighting. Come for me, G’mork! I am Atreyu!