I Don't Do Sadness
I self-soothe
“I don’t do sadness / Not even a little bit / Just don’t need it in my life / Don’t want any part of it,” sings Moritz Stiefel in Spring Awakening.
Moritz has been kicked out of school for failing his exams. His father screams at him about the humiliation of being the man with the son who failed. Worst of all, Moritz has not slept. Every night, his hands become tiny wolves that claw with hunger—scratching and scarring—until his body gives in and sleep breaks apart completely. He wakes to the proof and does not allow himself to look or think further. He only cleans himself up each morning, careful, as if cleanliness could undo the night. He moves through the day half-asleep, his mind fully awake, his hands quiet for now, he hopes to avoid those dreaded dreams and certain mirrors. He is careful around others, afraid they might see the scratches and know what made them. More terrifying is the thought that they wouldn’t need the evidence at all.
One night, Moritz Stiefel wanders into the woods with his father’s pistol hidden on his person, and there he runs into Ilse. She’s taken with Moritz. She asks what he’s looking for. If only he knew. She tells him she’s on her way home, asks if he wants to come, and when he cannot answer, she asks if he remembers how they used to play pirates—when everything was lighter. But, if Ilse can see how much they’ve grown, then she can see what he has become. “Moritz” she says, trying to wake him from his walking slumber. He is afraid she is already looking at it.
He cannot reminisce. Remembering would require him to measure the change between then and now, and he does not trust what that reflection would reveal. Memories of a boy who could play at monsters are replaced with the knowledge that he has become one–but no! He does not look. Moritz does not do sadness. Not even a little bit.
He tells Ilse to walk home on her own.
I have always connected to that refrain from Moritz. “I don’t do sadness.”
As a writer, and as a person, I have never wanted to lead with my own pain and depression and fears. Pain is too often deployed as a shortcut to depth and meaning. Pain is already annotated, just a defense mechanism for those desperate to be understood.
I want to write about joy instead. About desire and feeling light. I want to write about being thirteen and auditioning for the school play—The Mouse That Roared—because Rachel did, and I wanted to be where she was. It was my first play. I got the lead, Tully Bascombe—I still remember the name. Rachel played opposite me.
