WHISPERS
Am I mad? I suppose I am. But aren’t we all, in our own quiet ways? If you dissect your own mind long enough, you’re bound to stumble across oddities you would never admit to anyone else. I have one. I don’t know if there’s a scientific name for it, but it feels like a kind of madness. I talk to myself — not the casual “Where have I left my keys?” kind of mutterings. No, mine are full, unfolding dialogues about the daily mountain of problems I must face.
I’ve done it my whole life since I was a child. I don’t speak out loud; I whisper. I whisper because I know exactly how it would look to anyone watching. Embarrassing. Crazy. It might sound like the charming habit of an introverted genius brainstorming futuristic ideas, but it isn’t. The things I whisper about are private. I don’t want anyone to hear.
Perhaps my peculiarity is simply the result of never having had many friends. I was always alone at school. I still remember praying to God at the start of every new school year, begging Him to send me just one friend so I wouldn’t have to spend every break in lonely silence. God never answered. Eventually, the solitude stopped bothering me. My own mind had become the greatest companion I could ever wish for. Soon I realised I didn’t much like other people or their dull way of thinking. I began to distance myself from social interaction. And from then on, I suppose, I started having conversations with imagined versions of the people I wished I could one day talk to.
I can control it, to an extent. There are weeks when I go without whispering at all. But whenever something unpleasant happens — a dispute with my boss, a private worry, or some outrage on the television — I can’t stop myself. I make sure I’m safely out of earshot, and then the whispering begins.
I know I’ve probably just ruined whatever credibility I had left by admitting this. Even so, after confessing that I’m loca — as the Spanish would say — I keep analysing this madness of mine. I try to understand why my mind forces me to whisper. Is it a side effect of being so closely connected to my subconscious? Or is my subconscious simply not that unconscious after all? Maybe I just have to face the fact that I’m nuts.
Yet no matter how consuming or interesting those thoughts were, I had no time for them during that ridiculously hot July, when I was desperately studying for the dreaded Theatre History exam.
I didn’t hate Theatre Studies at first. In fact, I loved them. My greatest dream was to continue my research in that field. After deciding to pursue an Arts degree and discovering Stanislavski, something inside me shifted. It felt like a revelation I had been waiting for my whole life without knowing where or when it would come. He inspired me so deeply that I wanted to become a playwright myself. More than that, I wanted to teach others about his method, his philosophy, his genius, his greatness. That first year of distance learning, I was convinced I had finally found my purpose. But, God, how wrong I was.
I took on the heavy burden of studying and working at the same time, all on my small, fragile shoulders. During the first year I worked as a dispatcher, then spent my evenings summarising thick books on the arts. It was exhausting. Eventually I changed jobs and found an administrative position in a health insurance company. My boss was a decent, humane man. Even if I would come to him with the flimsiest excuse for a day off, he would have granted it. So, arranging my exams around work was never a problem.
Everything went smoothly at first. I passed Music History, Greek and Roman Art, Visual Arts, and Architecture. But Theatre — the subject that fascinated me most, the one on which I had spent countless ink-stained nights — I failed. Not once. Not twice. Three times.
Something was clearly wrong, and it wasn’t my attitude. My perseverance was fierce. I read and researched far beyond what was required, even though I couldn’t attend the lectures. I knew the material so thoroughly I could tell you the exact page where every fact appeared. Yet I was still knocked back. I blamed the professor.
She was an ordinary woman who worked hard to project an image of extraordinary brilliance. There was nothing particularly memorable about her — nothing that left a real impression, good or bad. She wasn’t someone you could look up to or turn to for genuine advice. She was one of those artists utterly consumed by her own creative persona, whatever that creativity was supposed to mean. Her belief in her own genius was so absolute that she had convinced not only herself but her colleagues and students as well. Despite my resentment, I sometimes wondered if I was being unfair, if she did have some real credibility. But every time that doubt crept in, I remembered the string of unfair results and the cheap excuses I received from her assistant.
The assistant was every bit as bad — perhaps worse. How many times had I dragged myself to the university in G., paid for the expensive train ticket, only to sit through her motivational nonsense? There was always that one small detail I had supposedly forgotten to mention. And because of that tiny omission, none of my effort or knowledge counted. It felt as if the two of them were working together to ruin students’ lives. Their favourite pretext was that they wanted us to “delve deeper into the subject and consider every possible aspect of stage techniques or philosophical ideas.”
It sounds like the usual complaint of failing students blaming their professor. Nothing could be further from the truth. The module was supposed to cover the development of modern theatre and the works of a few important playwrights. That was it. Nothing in exhaustive detail. It was a first-year subject — general knowledge. After retaking an exam a few times, a student was meant to pass eventually. The material consisted of facts, dates, and names. We weren’t expected to produce pages of profound philosophical insights into a character’s inner torment.
The professor and her assistant knew my situation perfectly well. They knew I couldn’t attend the lectures. In any normal circumstances, that would have been considered. Their excuses — “You didn’t mention what was said in class” — were absurd. The truth was simpler: they hated my guts. Otherwise, they would never have put me through the hell of retaking the Theatre History exam three times. And now it was about to be a fourth.
Absurdity at its finest.
