Enough

I have a habit of trying to get inside the minds of characters that I play, and I'm currently working myself into Medea. So this is only partly original. It's the first of many, many character studies, taking inspiration from the play as much as possible and trying to make it work. I was planning on writing something a lot more interesting for this week, but. These things happen. Have, essentially, an extrapolation of Medea's various monologues. The last 6 paragraphs are, I think, the only truly original things in this whole piece. Uhm. Also. I don't know, yet, if Medea swears. But. It was a lot less powerful without the swearing.

You’ve got some gall, you arrogant, selfish bastard.

I’d like to point out, right here, right now, that I never asked for this. So where do you get off telling me that this is all my fault? Where the hell do you get off assuming that you have absolutely nothing to do with this situation, that I’m seeing ghosts, that I’m paranoid, that, for some reason, what you did to me was something that was good for me? That I asked for?

You know, I don’t even understand how you can think I would buy any of your excuses. It’s as if you think that I’m an idiot or something. Is that what you think? That I’m an idiot?

Well. I was clearly an idiot when I abandoned everything for you. You can’t remember those nights where we were too busy to sleep – too busy planning a way for you to complete your stupid little quest so that you could get your kingdom back, or, later, too busy touching each other in every possibly way, over and over and over again.

I gave myself to you.

I gave you everything I had and everything I was. For you, I surrendered “daughter” for “lover”, abandoning my family, my home, the way of life that I loved, the values that I held close to my heart. Who was I to know what it was to kill? You taught me that.

Witch, yes. Murderess? Never. Not until you, not until there was something worth more to me than life, than reputation, than family, than home. And if you had told me at the start that I wasn’t worth any of that to you, was worth nothing more than a way to succeed in your...your fucking ambitions, your fucking goals, your fucking crown, your fucking ship, your fucking Golden fucking Fleece – if you had told me, I still would have done it. Do you hear me? I would still have done everything in my power for you. But you gave me hope, so that I was reckless and didn’t stop to think about how my life would be after you had gone because every look, every touch, every moan said that you would take me with you.

And nothing about you said that you would ever leave me, so I kept going. Brother-killer, treasure-stealer, home-leaver, that was me. I couldn’t go back – can’t go back, not ever – and you knew it. You held me that night, on that ship of yours, held me and rocked me until my tears stopped and promised me – promised me – that it would be worth it, that you would be worth it.

And I believed you. I believed you when you said that even with my father’s treasure it was impossible to get your throne back before your uncle died, and because you had taught me to kill, I killed again, called on my magic again for you, earned the hatred of yet another people for you, bore the price of death-magic, and for what? For a child to grow inside of me, pushing and kicking and making me tired and old before my time. For my entire body to fever and chill and explode into flames of violent, vibrant, impossible pain that made day into night and night into day until your son screamed his way through blood and water and tearing flesh into the cruel, cold world.

I gave you two sons, I gave you a throne, I gave you the deaths of all your enemies and in the process earned myself too many enemies to count, lost my home, lost my family, lost my virtue, lost my soul. And you held me and promised that it would be worth it.

You ran your hands over my body, made me ache with desire, whispered to me that I was everything, and I believed you.

And somehow you still maintain that this is my fault, that I brought down pain and suffering upon myself. Of course, it was very clearly I who encouraged you to take a princess to your bed.

I have to hear from your friends and from the gossip of servants that she is sweet and kind, that she knows languages that I have never heard of and reads and writes and is impossibly gifted with voice and look and that her household management is incomparable and she can tempt you more than I with the slender shape of her body. I have to hear that you are madly, passionately, vocally in love and I have to see, every day as I pass the courtyard of the palace, that the only one who lies to me is you.

Even the look of your eyes, which I had always thought so soft, so shining, so full of love, is instead a deception, has always been a deception, has always been straying elsewhere, looking for a more suitable object of your affections.

And now this is my responsibility, the fact that you never loved me. Was I not enough? Did I not do enough? What...what more could I have done? Tell me! Tell me why I was never enough for you. Tell me what it is that I lacked, what it is that lets her make you cry out her name while mine falls with scorn from your lips. Tell me why the sun and moon and stars dance in her eyes and mine are dull as lead, why her bloodless hands are more pleasing than ones that have held your head while you fevered, bound your wounds while you bled, caressed you into ecstasy.

Tell me why it wasn't enough that I've never loved anyone as I love you.