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When I was younger, I thought I was writing this column to advertise myself to "the reader" aka my "soulmate" who would brilliantly discern my worth and inner workings from my documented self.
It's fucking elusive, and now it hits differently.
This is a revelation of my madness and attempts to be un-invisible (in the tiniest of ways). I can't imagine anyone reading this, but I always imagine someone one day discovering this and feeling a smidgeon of my favorite emotion: camaraderie (which is perpetually hard for me to spell).
What does it matter?
Who would do such a thing?
Only a me.
Who am I?
I always tell people that know me who happen upon this - fuck I'll call it a blog - but, I cajole them to please not look at this as really me - look at it as a character based on me.
And so flawed.
My therapist asked, "do you really see yourself as broken?"
"how else can I see myself. I am broken."
"you're someone who has an imbalance in their brain that you manage well with medication and experience."
Lady, until I don't manage it well. Those are the times that bring my chance - any chance - at happiness up short.
I write to you because I don't have anyone else to tell. I write you because you exist. I write you because I know in some way I have a gift. It's a very tiny secret gift. If I could guess, it would be that I'm like my second brother-in-law to you and why my sister married him: my head has passed out in a plate of spaghetti with jeers. I'm comfortable because I'm so broken that you feel less broken by perhaps seeing the sauce bubbles.
And so I continue to try and reach you all the while thinking and (fear is the mindkiller) knowing that you'll never love me when I take off my armor.
Sometimes, I entertain the fantasy that it all might have turned out the way it's supposed to - perhaps my first marriage wasn't the correct fit for me - perhaps I had to contort too much. And of course I know my second marriage was with someone I never loved beyond a rescuer impulse "this man needs to feel."
And I sit here before this screen and the fucking Norfolk pine tries to live next to me. There's a baseball in a yellow cup given to me by someone with whom I might possibly be falling in love - whatever that means.
It's almost impossible for me to get through even typing that without crying - thinking I know that you'll reject me... like I've rejected and been rejected. What did I want though? someone who doesn't know me but is chained to me for death do us part? not again. that was a hell I didn't realize I was in until the passage of time and perspective.
Having fun is hard.
I usually have to be inebriated so I can shut that fucking voice in me that screams
YOU ARE BROKEN
STOP BOTHERING PEOPLE
HOW DARE YOU TRY AGAIN
SIT DOWN
SHUT UP
and if I believe that, obviously I'd have to give in to the impulse to off myself - relieve you all from the pain of having me exist.
Surely Shirley there must be a second of eight thousandth voice that whispers something else.
"I love you"
"you don't even fucking know what love his so shut the fuck up you fucking cunt."
"why are you so adamant and down?"
"protecting you from looking like a fucking fool. you already tried loving someone and look what they did to you? they destroyed you."
"that happened so long ago. I was so young."
"you're the same."
"god, I certainly hope that I still have that inside me, but it feels like getting trapped in the roots of a drowned tree in a fast moving undercurrent."
"nobody likes you nor your writing."
"should I just die then? why do I bother?"
"you secretly think that someone might one day know you, and still love you - but you're too old. you're a joke to all of us."
Laugh then.
"I bet you want to run away."
I already have.
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