Cătălina Stanislav - Hospital Drama, Bitterol on the beach, We'll be fine | People of Justice 2022

HOSPITAL DRAMA

"It's not your fault" is something you often hear after a breakup.

I didn't think it was my fault, thanks.

There's a certain tone, too.

As a lady I once shared a ward with asked me every morning:

"How are you, baby?"

She's plump and soft-spoken

Me bandaged up like I'd been in a car accident

I'd actually got an infected earring, but it had become serious, because that's my talent.

I'm fine, I tell people, like I was seriously ill.

It's not like I can say

that I watch TV shows with doctors and pretty girls

that I know Meredith plays it bad and has an annoying laugh

but after about six seasons, somehow I started to like her.

Every episode seems to have two key things:

there's always someone who dies and someone who hasn't professed their love.

someone gets hit by a bus or dies in a plane crash

and they decide in their last minutes of life to say

hey, I wanted you to know that I've been mega in love with you for 10 years.

then he cries.

He's in love too, but he's a man, he didn't realize it.

let's get a house and a dog, have a lake with a dam

he says through his tears

and one of those swings made out of a car wheel

(which wheel and dog will simply already be there when he buys the house)

I'm fine, I know that people in real life don't barge into each other's hospital wards and make a frantic 10 minute speech at the end of which they stick to all the walls in the ward kissing each other while their colleagues smile on the other side of the glass door.

In real life I think people break up and maybe have mediocre relationships for years

while checking someone else's Facebook status

and logging on to Russian websites

to secretly check out instagram stories

and as they type their username into the search bar their fingers are shaking and their heart is pounding,

almost like they're barging into a hospital ward

to confess their feelings to someone who is about to die.

In real life people buy plane tickets with ultimatums that don't get fulfilled

and then suffer behind screens a little bit every day.

If you don't wake up in the morning and see his face and just can't be happy just because of that, then it's not worth anything, a friend told me when we were drunk one morning in Bucharest, in the red light of a hotel near the train station, where I always left more alone than I entered.

I'm fine.

I've googled you three times already.

I feel like I'm going crazy.

I'm thinking with horror

that if I die in a plane crash

we won't even have those three minutes to tell you.

how often I dream about you being in my kitchen in the morning.

BITTEROL ON THE BEACH

If I had registered

this conversation on the beach I have a feeling it would have been

the equivalent of a webcam video in 2005

when a boy called me beautiful

and I cried

and I didn't think he was handsome, and I thought that was cruel.

it was my fault that he thought I was beautiful

it's not your fault that I think you're beautiful

even if you're not so beautiful anymore

even though I wouldn't be recording this conversation anyway.

so I wouldn't remember sweaty toes sinking into wet sand

while my friends existed in warmer, softer universes

and the people in the campsite roasting meat in front of their tents

and I felt my shoulders bare and warm

smelling of sun cream and meat and wet napkins

I wanted to tell you that my teeth were cracking from a camper that wasn't a camper...

I wanted to tell you that I fell in love with you I think

and the mountain that women don't walk on was looking at me

like an utterly disappointed father

I felt the signs of sunstroke all day long until late at night.

while other friends and their friends also existed in warmer universes

with a gentler light

and I prayed someone would buy me one of those pink vitamin waters

I was brought to tears of joy when she came into the room with it.

WE'LL BE FINE

i really want to see pictures

of your whole life

your girlfriends

the big hair that makes shadow

on the sand in front of some ruins you once visited

your winter sweaters to be worn

hours in front of the TV

that you enjoyed with your folks

your face when you open presents

or when your mother woke you up to go to school

I'm nervous in the morning, I bet you're docile and slow

like a freshly spayed animal

your face when there's no milk for coffee

in the fridge

when there's no hope left

in the sad, doubtful looking eyes

to tell you it's okay

we'll be all right

you'll see how well

Cause if I'm really honest

I never tell anyone

♪ it's okay, we're gonna be fine ♪

cause I always have to hear it.

The People of Justice 2022 shows were produced alongside Than a Magazine, a team of journalists who believe in the transformational power of stories.

Together with over 1,000 viewers, we imagined what a more just Romania could look like through vulnerability, empathy and the power of example. In each city we brought on stage lawyers, journalists, civic activists and artists whose true stories about justice: how we achieve it, what it means for justice, education, the healthcare system or our cities.