Old Age at Twenty

(Performed as a monologue during HATCH at the ADC Theatre)

My eyes don’t work.

My hands don’t work.

My brain doesn’t work. It’s broken. Dead. Brain dead. I’m brain dead. Twenty years old and dying. Dying quickly, fading fast. Dying now, I can feel it. My vision is a hurricane, a collision of colours and letters and NOISE. My vision is a vortex. The world gets sucked in and mixed around and nothing makes sense any more. My brain is even worse.

Words swirling around on a whiteboard and a tinny voice and I look down at my shaking hands and up at the descending storm and I recall the first time I fainted. Years ago now. A letter written in French. It doesn’t make sense. I faint, out cold. They think I’m dead. No matter now. Soon I will be.

This isn’t like last time. This time, I’m dying.

Pause. Here the tone seems to change, becoming less melodramatic and more flippant.

At the not-so-tender age of twenty years, I have become convinced that soon I will die of old age. Laugh all you want. I’ll laugh with you. I’ll laugh and laugh and laugh until my lungs burst, and I’ll still be laughing when they lower me into the ground, and I’ll still be laughing when I meet my maker and He’ll take on look at me and laugh and we’ll keep laughing for eternity because

it’s just so damn funny.

Beat.

Then He’ll send me to hell for swearing.

Beat.

But seriously, it’s just so damn funny to be dying of old age at twenty. That means I was middle-aged at ten. Looking back on myself as a ten-year-old, that actually makes rather a lot of sense.

Pause.

All the signs are there. Or rather, here. In my own body. My eyes have gone blurry. I can’t see. My hand shakes. I can’t write. My feet are sore. I can’t walk.

Beat.

Now, I know they say that the youth of today grow up too quickly, but frankly, this is ridiculous.

Pause.

Dying at age twenty.

I look at my grandmother, who is exactly four times my age (a clean-cut symmetry I really appreciate) and I think “Which of us will they bury first?” And as this sprightly eighty-year-old jumps up to fetch me another biscuit, I realise with a sinking feeling that it’s going to be me.

Pause.

So, I’m dying at twenty. What have I achieved with my life? Ten A*s at GCSE, four at A-Level, kissed three boys and slept with none, filled several notebooks with terrible poetry and watched every episode of Gossip Girl at least twice. Not an outstanding contribution to the world, really, is it? At age eleven I was convinced that I would swim the Channel, win the Grand National, climb Everest and win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Oh, and a few Oscars too, of course.

Beat.

Gosh, I miss eleven-year-old me. If I met her now, I’d probably want to punch her, of course, but it was great back when I was that deluded. I really was a precocious little thing. Truth be told, my only redeeming quality was that I laughed like a donkey. Ee-aw, ee-aw. (Giggles) I suppose I still do.

So, to summarise, I have fulfilled precisely none of the ambitions of my eleven-year-old self. Still, at least I haven’t killed anyone, or bankrupted the Hamilton College Law Society.

Beat.

Oh wait…

(Jokingly, with discomfort/panic): Still, at least I haven’t bankrupted the Hamilton College Law Society.

Pause.

Right. Now we’ve established that I’ve done nothing with my life. Moving swiftly onwards. Will anyone miss me?

Pause.

I like to think so. But then again, this isn’t fantasy. I’m dying. I have to be realistic. Will anyone miss me?

My parents, I suppose. I mean, they have to, don’t they? For a while at least. Just a while, of course; they have the dog to look after, so they can’t spend too long mourning me. Lovely little thing she is, a tiny little Miniature Dachshund. Annoyed the hell out of me when she was a puppy, but she’s not so bad now. I’m glad they have her now. I’ve heard losing a child is tough on the parents, and their marriage isn’t that strong anyway. Maybe they’ll stay together for the dog.

Friends? I do have a few. Strong circle of twelve back home, I’d say most of them will be at the funeral, a few will cry and one or two might miss me for a few months. But it won’t be as hard on them as it once would have been. I know we’ve all become very different since going off to uni.

Pause.

Sarah always liked my watch. I’ll leave that to her.

Uni friends. That’s a difficult one. The college will be “shocked and saddened”, I suppose, they’ll have the flag at half mast for a day or two, the Master will talk admiringly about a student he wouldn’t even recognise if he met her on the street. Most people in my year might use it as an excuse not to hand in an essay, but they won’t really be affected. I tend to form close bonds with a small group of people, rather than being vaguely friendly with everyone.

So yes, there will be a small group of uni friends who will really miss me, who will hug each other and cry and think of me every time they hear ‘Mr Brightside’. But I’m not naïve. I know that in a few years, they’ll all have finished uni, moved away from Cambridge, got high-powered City jobs, met their soul mates, settled down. Will they tell their soul mates about That Friend Who Died At Twenty? Maybe. Probably not. By then I’ll be nothing more than a twinge in their memories, something distant and difficult to conjure up. They’ll hear ‘Mr Brightside’ and think of me, fair enough, but they won’t remember the colour of my eyes or the smell of my perfume.

Pause.

Sad, really.

Beat.

Still, no time to dwell, I’m not finished yet! I know there’s one question you’re all dying to ask. Don’t be embarrassed, it’s fine, everybody loves a bit of romantic gossip.

Do I have a boyfriend?

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, you’re in luck. Danny is a five foot eight inch hairy little hobbit with scruffy brown hair and watery green eyes, and he’s the love of my life. I’ll miss Danny most when I’m gone. You know, if you can…miss people. I think he’ll miss me most too.

Pause.

I think...he’s the reason I’m not so keen on dying. I mean, for myself, it won’t be that bad. This old age business is a bit of a pain in the arse, but at least I won’t have to put up with global warming any longer. But Danny…I worry about what he might do when I’m gone. What might happen to him.

Beat.

Still, I’m probably worrying without cause. I mean, come on. I know fine rightly he’ll go running back to that other skinny blonde thing within a month.

Pause.

I suppose that’s it, really, isn’t it? I can’t think of any other significant areas of my life. Not that the ones I’ve already described have been at all significant. They’ve just been what I thought you’d want to hear about. But I don’t think I can put it off for any longer. The end is coming for all of us. And now I’ve reached mine. So…

In summation (yes Mrs Thompson, I’m dying and I’ll start my conclusion however I want, thank you very much), the world won’t miss me. Too young to have made an impact, too old to be a tragic child death. The only trace I’m going to leave behind will be a headstone. Maybe some day, someone walking past will stop and read it and wonder about my life. Let’s hope they have a good imagination.