I just finished a very rough first draft of the script I started four years ago and just recently rediscovered. The working title right now is “Live At 5”, like a promo for a newcast. It’s (hopefully) a dark personal odyssey into a woman’s quest to succeed at any cost. Or not. It needs some more work but I wanted to get a rough done before we started shooting Cinderella so I have something to pitch, should God smile upon us and Cinderella is good and people want to maybe employ me.
It’s funny, what spurred me to finish tonight was my own struggle with encroaching depression. I’m getting used to dealing with this mood sneaking in around the edges and I’m learning how to deal with it on a consistent basis. At least when it comes on now, it’s not as encompassing and all consuming as it once was. I’m in better shoes and in a better place than I was even a year ago. But that doesn’t stop it from coming, it just diminishes it a little bit.
I hung out at my usual Monday haunt – Bigfoot Lodge for Monday night rock-n-roll karaoke hosted by the fabulous Vitamin E. Several of the usual friends were hanging out and I sat and talked about men and flirting and life with one of the lovely chicks that we all know and love. There’s a guy there that has his eye on her and she wasn’t sure about flirting back to his flirting because she didn’t know anything about him and I asked her how could she know anything about him if she didn’t flirt back and let him know she wanted to know more about him and we got into an absurd, funning discussion about flirting backwards and forwards. Anyway, the guy eventually either got the hint or someone very kindly nudged him in her direction and they were actually talking to each other instead of just flirting when I left.
And I walked to my car thinking about a Wally Lamb book I read a long time ago called She’s Come Undone. It’s about a woman who discovers that she’s disappearing – literally – after she turned 40. People no longer see her, she is quite literally vanishing from her own life.
I struggle with feeling like that when the depression wants to press in. It makes me feel like I’m invisible and that no one would notice if I did simply vanish. That feeling was coming over me as I headed home, feeling that I don’t exist, that I wouldn’t be missed, that I’m vanishing from my own life.
Strangely enough, where I had left off in the script is a very desperate man who is about to do something that ends tragically. Looking at his life makes him realize that he has nothing to live for, nothing of value, that, due to his circumstances, he is invisible to the world at large and that no one would miss him if he were gone.
So I took the depression by the hand and made it sit down at my Ibook and write. Now, two hours later (actually, really about an hour because I had to check Myspace and email and research something quick), I have a short but finished script. And I think it’s exactly what I wanted it to be. I’ve got to fill in a scene or two which required actually finishing the script so I could see where the muse was leading me regarding a few script points. But now that I’m there, I just have to go fix some timeline logic issues, figure out how to bring her father back into the end, and tie up some loose ends. I need to add about 20 pages to make it an acceptable length and I think these things will bring me in right about where I want to be.
So, while the depression is not exactly gone, at least I feel productive and channeled some of that blue-ness on to the page. Now maybe I can get some sleep and be refreshed for tomorrow (today?), ready to face a full day of work on Cinderella, resolving some problems with the fundraiser and, yee-ha!!, actually getting around to casting the thing. I’m looking very much forward to that and that alone should push the blues away for at least a little while. But for now, Twyla and I are going to turn off the Ipod, post this missive, then disappear into slumber and sweet dreams.
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