Like Dreaming, Backwards
By Kellie Powell

This play is a work in progress. It has not been finished. It is a series of monologues and scenes about the suicide of a young college student named Nell. Leah is Nell's mother. The play also includes monologues from Nell's acquaintance, Yale, and her friend, Natalie.

LEAH

She had chronic depression, ever since she was twelve. Her father had depression, too. And her sister. And I was on antidepressants for a while, when I was her age. She was very high-functioning. She went years without any real incidents. She had control of it when she was in high school. And then, all of a sudden, things just... fell apart. She... spiraled. I asked her to move back home, but she said no, over and over again. She was hospitalized last summer. But I really thought that she'd get past it. I thought, "It's just a matter of time before she finds the right medicine, or the right therapist... and things will go back to normal."

That day, we'd made plans to have breakfast. I called her, but she didn't answer her phone. I thought she'd turned it off and slept late, so I went to her apartment and knocked on her door. It wasn't locked. I went in, and... I found her lying on the floor in the kitchen.

Why didn't she come to me? I would have done anything for her. Didn't she know that?

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