Just Don’t Care
A rough-finished piece, from a cross-wired switch, about your well-meant but woefully ignorant advice
TW: overt and metaphorical representation of bullying, emotional abuse, cPTSD hyper-vigilance, and dissociation.
Everyone is born with a switch.
Toggle it one way and you care.
Toggle the other and you don’t.
As a baby, this switch is still being wired and on occasion ends up with some glitches—all depending on the baby’s switch room environment experience.
Today, I happily and hastily present to you an impromptu substackorial production to explore this very concept.
In Just Don’t Care, you will be taken on a journey from the first seeds to the late stages of cPTSD; all through the eyes of our switch operator, Maggie. You will observe her heroic fight against the evil forces of chronic emotional abuse and devotional manipulations that have infiltrated her isolated switch room environment. All to better help you understand the fault logic of telling any cPTSD survivor, “just don’t care.”
We hope you and your own switchboards enjoy the show, and can successfully overlook our complete abandonment of proper conventions for stage direction, screenplay-ish formatical-standardry, and such as soon as we set off.
Let’s begin.
[orchestra vibrates to life, velvet curtains rise]
Act I:
A bare, windowless room is illuminated by a single sconce which is hung at the back wall and aimed down at a simple light switch. There are two doors being slowly rolled and they push to fit in the corners of the room by the back wall.
Right Door: A small child enters the room and closes the door behind her. She is six or seven years old, and skips care free to the center of the room. She turns to face the audience and yells, “hit it!”
The hamster dance song starts playing and she starts dance flossing while making hamster teeth faces.
The song stops at once as she cracks herself up. She opens the left door and another girl is standing there.
Once again our main character yells to the audience, “hit it!”
Hamster flossy teeth dance commences.
Girl in the door cracks up and starts doing it with her. Song ends and they high five.
[Girl in door]: You’re hilarious, Maggie!
Door closes, Maggie skips to the center of the room beaming.
She does a little happy dance and shouts to the ceiling “Hit it!”
But as soon as she starts her dance, the left door opens again. This time a crowd is on the other side.
They all start laughing and jeering.
Weirdo! Such a nerd! What is wrong with you? Ewww why are you acting like that? You’re gross!
Maggie stops and looks at the audience, the music stops. The jeering doesn’t.
Maggie’s friend rushes through the crowd and peels off the label above the switch on the wall. It says “the just don’t care about them switch.” She gives Maggie a hug and then dives back into the crowd.
Maggie beams and rushes over to the switch. Flips it. The door slams shut on the crowd.
The audience applauds and Maggie mimes waiting for them to say something. Everyone yells “hit it!”
Music starts. The stage starts to fade to black as Maggie is doing her hamster flossy dance. But stage turns back to bright as the right door opens and the music skids to a stop.
Maggie’s sister, Dottie: “What the hell are you doing Maggot?”
Maggie: Dancing?
Dottie: That was not dancing. Don’t ever do it again. I don’t want a spaz for a sister.
Maggie, frowning: Yeah, well?
Maggie runs back and flips the wall switch. Dottie stops the closing door with her palm, and shoves it back open.
Dottie: who, the hell do you think you are?
Maggie backs up: I, um, I just like the dance.
Dottie: More than me?
Maggie: No! No of course not!
Dottie: Seems like you must. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done that.
Maggie, crying now: No! I’m sorry! I’ll stop doing the dance. I don’t want to be a spaz. You’re right. It wasn’t dancing.
Dottie: Good. And just so you know? If you ever try that switch on this door again? I’ll rip it out of the wall.
Scene fades to black as Dottie slams the door.
Act II:
A bare, windowless room is illuminated by a single sconce which is hung at the back wall and aimed down at a simple light switch that is partially held to the wall with duct tape. There are two doors in the corners of the room by the back wall, the left one has cobwebs all over it, the one on the right is worn and cracked and hanging loose on its hinges. Around it are trip wires and makeshift DIY alarms you might see in some zombie movie. All of the wires are strung up and connect to a loft which is now being illuminated above the empty switch room. Up here, a teenage Maggie is painting with headphones on.
A line starts to tighten from underneath the loose door and sets off alarm bells in the switch room and the loft. Maggie tosses her brush down, chucks her headphones off, wipes off her makeup all while yanking on a rope that pulls the full alarm apparatus up and out of the switch room, then she drops from a rope ladder and hides it behind a false wall—that has a TON of obviously DIY builds behind it now.
She straightens her clothes and hair. Exaggerates her expressions a few times out into the audience and then settles on solemn non-expression and sits at the far left wall, cross legged, and staring at the floor. The lights flash on and off, and a cardboard cut out is being set in place by Maggie that looks exactly like she had just a moment before: crossed-leg and sitting there. She adjusts it and races into the false wall and up into the loft. She puts her headphones back on halfway, picks up her brush, and waits.
The right door bangs open. Dottie is standing in the doorway livid.
Dottie, glaring at cardboard Maggie : You just think you are so cool don’t you? Applying for art school?
Maggie, from the loft: No.
Dottie: Yeah? Well if you didn’t then you wouldn’t be applying. So obviously you just think you are better than everyone else. Is that it!?
Maggie, from the loft: No.
Dottie: Shut up! I don’t believe a word you say.
Maggie, putting her headphones on, goes back to painting.
We hear music while a muted Dottie starts raging at cardboard Maggie.
But then, Dottie seems to catch on. She rips cardboard Maggie in half and starts searching for Maggie. Dottie finds the hidden door. Pops up behind Maggie in the loft.
Scene fades to black when Maggie screams as Dottie rips off the headphones and the music stops.
Act III:
A bare, windowless room is illuminated by a single sconce which is hung at the back wall and aimed down at a simple light switch that is held to the wall with what is a very obvious diy plaster job. There are two doors in the corners of the room by the back wall, the left one has been cleaned, no cobwebs, but a single alarm bell has been placed that looks to be connected to the one on the right and to an iron-barred room above. The one on the right has a state of the art security system and a large red button on a pillar that says “only press in emergencies”
A young man in his twenties enters from the left door holding a loose string in his hands that should have tripped the alarm on that door.
Him: Maggie, why is there a new alarm?
Maggie pops up from the barred loft, wild-eyed. She checks monitors that she drops down from the ceiling of the loft as Ben shuts the door and waits.
Maggie: Hey Ben, just give me a moment please. I got a text from my sister a few minutes ago.
Ben: I thought she didn’t have your number anymore.
Maggie: She doesn’t.
Ben: Then how did she text you?
Maggie: It’s… complicated.
Ben: I’m listening.
Maggie: You’ll call me crazy.
Ben: I don’t think you are crazy.
Maggie, sighing, presses a button and a metal elevator drops her back into the switch room.
She doesn’t walk to him. He keeps his distance. She sits at the front of the stage and stares at the floor.
Maggie: She posted something on social and tagged one of my friends in it that she barely knows. The message was directed at me though.
Ben: How do you know that.
Maggie, turns and glares at him.
Ben, lifts his hands and leans against the left door: Okay! We are operating under the assumption it was for you.
Maggie returns her gaze to the audience then the floor.
Maggie: She was bragging to my friend about how she was so proud of me and how she used to love practicing painting with me and remembers when she first taught me to blend colors with a finger paint set.
Ben: So?
Maggie: So?! It never happened!
Ben, sighing: Why do you care, though? You aren’t in contact with her anymore right?
Maggie, seething: But she is LYING about me!
Ben: Yes, but you don’t live with her anymore. You don’t have to care.
Maggie, frowning, looks at him pointedly.
Ben: oh. You tried that. And that’s why you were up there?
Maggie, curls arms around her knees and grunts: Yes. Stupid DIY switch always over-reacts and shunts me up there.
Ben: You know, you can use this one instead.
He points to the patched up one.
Ben: She doesn’t have control over you anymore. So why not flip the normal switch?
Maggie: Ha. Normal. Right. Look behind the switch.
Ben, leaning forward off the door: Behind it?
Maggie, sighing, gets up and walks back to the wall. This time she reaches for the top of the wall and rips the wallpaper away. A complicated network shows how there are still a ton of wires crossed behind the scenes between the switch on the wall and the diy switch network that connects to the right door and her loft with a whole family tree of who would be affected by who and how it would get back to her and in what way.
Maggie: It is never just flipping a switch for me.
…
[Slow fade to black as audience looks around asking each other if that is really all that this was. Comments of “how disappointing.” and “did it feel a bit overly specific and shallow to you?” and “trying too hard, yet not hard enough.” all float around the room. Metaphor is lost in analysis. The audience turns on the producer. Request a refund on their time. Unfortunately, the producer just doesn’t seem to care.]