Drama. Sometimes, there's nothing better than a big juicy drama, either as a lead player or a bit one. Drama can feel like living. There's so much emotionality, so much STUFF happening that you must be alive, you must be feeling, this all must be real, right? Drama can make you feel like you're IN – part of – something. Well, the something you're in is your own muck and you're face down, squirming in it and calling that motion "living." Drama, in other words, is a means of not living because drama is about being in a play and performing for an audience. Life is offstage. It's time to close the show. Here's how.

Cast of Characters

Lead: You.

One way to know you're the lead in the drama is if you think someone else is the lead in the drama. "I'm so over that fight I had with mom; she just won't let it go." Drama stems from a factual completion – like a breakup – without an emotional completion. Drama is about pretending. Pretending you're over it; pretending you don't care anymore; pretending you're unaffected; pretending you're not angry. Drama is a fake connecting thread to a person when the actual thread has been cut. Instead of connecting to each other via real communication, you connect via acting. If there are secrets, secondhand information, lots of unsaid stuff between you and someone else, and big emotions about the person – secret glee that they didn't get that job! rage that they did! - then you are the lead in a drama.

Bit Player: You.

If you "got sucked into" (read: "chose to participate in") someone else's drama, you are a bit player in a drama. Bit players generally get into the show by making unwitting statements – "Congrats on your new job!" only to have the person's spouse go, "What? You're quitting?" If you invest your energy in these people's crizzap, you're a bit player. In other words, you've made their drama into your drama. All of a sudden you find yourself trying to right something when you didn't even know you'd done anything wrong; you talk to other friends about it; you send apologetic or frustrated emails to the main players. If you both accidentally incite something AND subsequently get involved in its aftermath, you're a bit player.

The Ex, Mom, Co-Worker, Friend

Actually, no one else matters; this drama stars YOU.

Prologue

You dated The Ex for a few years before the two of you broke up a year or so ago; you're still up in The Ex's junk (like maybe you're in business together); you're OVER it you tell yourself; The Ex can go off and do whatever – you don't care. Then, via secondhand information (from someone who's about to become a Bit Player), you find out that The Ex is dating someone else.

Curtain rises.

Act I

You stew for a few days. It's agonizing for you. What did Bit Player say exactly? What does Bit Player know? I mean, it's not like you care about The Ex anymore; you're just curious. You spend a lot of time telling yourself you don't care. You go on fishing expeditions and pretend that's not what you're doing. You ask your source, "Hey, how's Bit Player doing? What's Bit Player up to? You know, I haven't talked to Bit Player in ages; what's Bit Player's email?" Maybe you contact Bit Player to get more info. At any rate, at some point, you are unable to let this go. For someone who's over it, you suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure are putting in a lot of work and emotions in finding out what's going on. So you decide to contact The Ex. You know you have to say something innocuous and casual – this, after all, is the character you're projecting to your audience (which is primarily comprised of you but also contains your friends, your family, The Ex, your co-workers – anyone with whom you're being fake about your feelings).

So you contact The Ex in some manner. At a core level, you know this is going to get some kind of reaction out of The Ex – that's the whole point. But, because you're acting so totally cool and uncaring about the whole thing and because your comment is so meaningless in and of itself – well, any reaction is surely not about YOUR drama. If The Ex goes all crazy, then that's about The Ex and not about you – or so you tell yourself. Of course, if you're not looking for a reaction… why do you even bother saying anything? You shove that thought aside. "Hey, heard you and your new relationship ran into Bit Player." While you're at it, you decide to send Bit Player an email, just to dig as much as you can about a person you claim you don't care about anymore.

Curtain.

Act II

Scene 1

You know – K-N-O-W – that this is going to set off a shitstorm in The Ex. In fact, that's the whole point – to evoke a burst of emotions in The Ex. Because if The Ex gets all upset, then you can relax; The Ex's upset means that The Ex still secretly cares. Phew. Of course, you tell yourself that you never anticipated there would be any reaction to your casual text message. Telling yourself that The Ex overreacted feels good! You now go about your business like nothing happened.

Scene 2

Bit Player receives Lead's email. Lead's email is filled with vagueness, and you can't exactly tell what's going on. What did The Ex say to Lead? It looks like The Ex put some really nasty statements in your mouth. It's all "Whisper Down the Valley" in which one person told another person who told another person. You don't know what was said to whom, but you feel anxious – like you somehow did something wrong. You feel terribly misunderstood and decide to correct things; you feel something got out of control and it's somehow your responsibility to control it, as if it should have been in your control to begin with. You respond to Lead, trying to explain yourself.

Scene 3

Lead gets Bit Player's email. You don't know what to make of it. It wasn't very informative. Now you really need to know what went down between Bit Player and The Ex. Your emotions are in a total flurry, though maybe, beneath it all, is a kind of depression. There's energy, anxiety – you don't even know why or what you want. You do a lot of work to convince yourself that you're just experiencing natural curiosity about a friend because, at some level, you know your emotions are way outsized for the situation. At a very core level you CAN'T be upset about The Ex because, if you look there, well, that's a total emotional black hole. You act even harder, all the while digging around for some piece of information that will make all these feelings go away.

Scene 4

Meanwhile, Bit Player gets a furious email from The Ex. "What the fuck did you say to Lead? Lead says you revealed everything about our conversation. Jesus, what is wrong with you? I thought I could trust you. You're an ass."

You fly into a tailspin. Huh? What? You discuss this with friends. "I haven't seen either of them in years. Last I heard, they were long broken up. In fact, The Ex said they were really good friends now and were both off seeing other people. What the fuck is going on? Now The Ex hates me – and I didn't even do anything. And why the fuck did Lead say anything?" You can't really be mad at the secondhand source for saying something to Lead. After all, if you genuinely thought you were saying something non-gossipy and meaningless, then the secondhand source didn't break any trust. And anyway, when did The Ex's personal life become your secret? You write a baffled, hurt, and maybe kind of angry email to The Ex.

Curtain.

Act III

Scene 1

Bit Player receives an email from The Ex. In fact, a flurry of emails go back and forth between you and The Ex whereby you wind up kind of apologizing for something you don't even think you did wrong. It's not like The Ex told you the new relationship was a secret. The Ex is accusing you of breaking trust – and you're letting The Ex do exactly that. You have bought into The Ex's belief that you did something wrong. But you can't quite figure out how to correct it because, no matter how much you explain yourself to The Ex, The Ex is still mad. You're looking for The Ex to excuse you from the drama, to say, "Sorry, you're right; I was drunk when I wrote that email; ignore it; you did nothing wrong." You keep trying to get that response from The Ex but it just doesn't happen. You're at a loss. You're in the drama-nado now, swirling around, out of control, trying to get everything back to where it was and utterly failing.

Scene 2

The Lead just can't let this go. You hate feeling this way, but you have to find out what was happening. You don't even know if you care. Things were in some kind of stasis before, and now they're not. The email with Bit Player wasn't satisfying; your secondhand source doesn't know anything more; while you know you got a rise of The Ex (thank God), it's not really that satisfying. What you want is to rip open The Ex's skull and find out exactly what emotions lie in there, to somehow know for all time specifically what The Ex feels about you and then somehow get ongoing updates wired directly from The Ex's subconscious to yours. It's all so stressful and depressing. There's not really much more you can think of to do – of course, you've been in this emotional space before. "Kind of depressed all the time" is your steady state, and you slide right back into it.

And so it ends, kind of boring and unresolved. Lead, Bit Player, and The Ex are all slightly riled up then it all dribbles away to a space where no one knows anything more than they knew before but everyone's a little bit angrier and disconnected.

Curtain. Omnes exeunt.

Oh, By The Way…

If you think you're Lead, well guess what? The Ex thinks the same thing. The Ex is going through a marginally different version of the exact same drama that Lead is. In The Ex's drama, The Ex is Lead and you are The Ex.

What's This Show Really About?

So the first thing to recognize is that, whether you're a Lead or a Bit Player, the show is not about anyone other than you. In the example above, you're probably not into The Ex anymore. However, the breakup with The Ex set off a terrible cascade of self-esteem issues with you, self-esteem issues you brought to the relationship (and which, in all likelihood, contributed to its end). In other words, in a certain sense, you're right – you are over The Ex. What you're not over is hating yourself or feeling that you'll never be good enough or any of a host of other issues. You invested The Ex with meaning, like "The Ex is in love with me; therefore I'm loveable." When The Ex left, so did your loveableness. So the drama is not about getting an emotional rise out The Ex; it's about getting an emotional rise out of YOURSELF via The Ex.

The Bit Player is no different. "The Ex hates me!" "The Lead thinks I said horrible things!" You have invested these people's responses with meaning: if The Ex hates you, then you're horrible; if the Lead perceives you badly then you're a bad person. You are turning to these external people to correct feelings within yourself – if you're liked and understood then you can feel okay about what you did. In the above example, you believe you somehow did something wrong by saying whatever it is you said. But you only believe it because THEY believe it, i.e. in fact you don't actually think you did anything wrong. You simply feel in trouble for something; you've probably felt "wrong" in a lot of other situations. This is a pattern for you. You invest in the drama in order to feel "right" about yourself.

Ending The Run

Step 1: So the first step to getting offstage and into your life, is by getting real. Getting real in this case means acknowledging your feelings as valid even as you're judging them. Do both at once.

"I know it's stupid but I feel [depressed, stabbed in the gut, enraged, etc.] that The Ex is seeing someone else."

Putting down your feelings means putting down yourself. Own them. If you can own them without the judgment, even better. Don't worry about what you "should" feel; focus on what you DO feel.

Step 2: Ask yourself when you've felt this way before. In a past relationship? With dad? With more or less everyone you get close to? Patterns can be very tough to crack. However, knowing you're in a pattern can also be weirdly calming. A pattern tells you it's totally about you, a fact which can often take the sting out of whatever the other person was up to.

Step 3: Figure out what you really feel about the other person. Are you still in love with The Ex? Do you, the Bit Player, really feel you've wronged Lead and/or The Ex? Give yourself permission to tell yourself the truth. Play the following game – "If I were someone who… what would I feel?"

"If I were someone who was genuinely no longer in love with The Ex, what would I feel when I found out The Ex was dating someone else?"

"If I were someone who believed I did nothing wrong, what would I do when I received The Ex's email?"

What you would feel can serve as a reality check to help you figure out what to do next.

Step 4: Examine what you DO feel but behave based on what you WOULD feel. Would, not should. If you would feel about The Ex's new relationship something ala "that's cool" then ask yourself how someone who felt "that's cool" would behave. Would that person yell? Write detached notes? Start dating someone they didn't care about just to get revenge?

If you're the Bit Player, would you write a note back to The Ex? If you would, what would you say in it – would you still defend yourself? Would you call instead of email? Would you ignore the whole thing entirely? What you would feel is actually what you do feel; you just haven't stepped into being that person yet.

Nota Bene

By the way, this is all self-help, but the truth is it's a lot easier to get through something like this with some counseling assistance. If you're in a drama, it's because you have a lot of emotion tied to something, and it's often simpler to untangle it all with a disinterested, outside party. However, whether you do it alone or with someone else, the steps are exactly the same.

The hardest thing about choosing life over drama is that, because drama is pre-scripted, you know where it's going to end. For all its emotionality, drama is safe, and it's that sense of safety that makes you show up and do the show day after day after day. Performing your life is so much easier than living it. Being real is scary when you don't know who the real you truly is. But the only way you're going to find out is by getting off that stage, by leaving your audience behind, and stepping outside into the world.