Monologue #2, part one: The Observer

Monologue series

There’s a pain that arrives
when you can see it all laid out in front of you—
the patterns, the process,
the road unfolding,
familiar in its ache.

And you’re torn.

Is this self-prophecy?
Are you simply waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Or when it drops—
is that the proof
that it was always going to fall?
Beyond control.
Beyond intervention.

This is not something I’m in.
This is something I witness.

And that, in itself, is a strange pain.

I am not the protagonist.
Not even the supporting actress.
Just the audience.
Watching.
Seeing the story before it closes—
and wanting, in some quiet ache,
to yell across the curtain,
“Turn back.”
But it is not my place.

And so obediently, I watch.
I cry.
For the ache that is coming,
for a pain I know by heart
but cannot prevent.

I sit in stillness and wonder:
Why do we crave the storm?

Is it the calm that frightens us?
Or is the chaos simply
more familiar than the unknown?
Does this, too,
boil down to fear?

Fear—the thing that makes us run,
and sometimes the same thing that makes us stay.

And if we ever conquer it—
if we sit with what is,
and resist the urge to interfere,
how then
do we love
without rescuing?

That, perhaps,
is the lesson.

And it is not an easy one.
But it is necessary.

With grace -with ink,

Mai