To Whom it May Concern,
Some days I feel an urge to cross the sea. To get away from this America where no longer is it the land that’s wild, but those who inhabit every inch of our cramped concrete wasteland. Maybe it’s the lure of London’s foggy streets? Or the beauty of the Italian countryside? I can never quite grasp the reason for this feeling, but it’s sure getting stronger.
I’ve gone to shrink after shrink, to no avail. It seems that talking to someone whom I barely know about my feelings only seems to bring back the events in my life which I choose to not relive. I’ve tried making changes, living in different places with different people at different times. It changes nothing.
I found the psychiatrist within a bottle, but it seems the only thing he wanted to speak of was pain and partying, two things I like less and less the more I experience them.
The idea of any sort of relationship with another human being is enough to make me run again and again these days. It seems that every time I’ve let someone in, they’ve found their own way back out in less time than it took me to get off of my socially-weary ass and open the door to let them inside. There was one, and she stayed for quite some time within my shell-like home with me, but as time went by, she built up walls within my house and locked herself tight within them. And let me get this through to you, my friend: This door was one I had ever increasing difficulty finding as our lives progressed. She seemed to have left me no key. But yet these walls she built were not outside of my shell, and she stayed well hidden. Don’t get me wrong, she made occasional appearances when it suited her, when she needed me. But I had no way of finding her on those nights when solitarily I searched for her presence. Her heart. The true woman with which I had found love.
The partying, on the other hand, was the total opposite. It seemed the doors to these social nightmares were open to me all along. And, though I fought to not enter them, they too were hidden cleverly within me. I found alcohol to be quite an open door for some time. Once this door had been slammed open and broken down, it seemed it would never close again. I dived headfirst into the deep waters of its clutches, and I’d begun to believe I could no longer swim. Pills became another of the creatures holding me down, and they too were stronger than I. Not to mention the haze I found within the sacred mist of my ancestors. The smoke that filled my lungs for so long was not only tobacco, but also came from a leaf grown with the sole intent to clutch at the cells within one’s brain and play games with them. This haze mind-fucked me off and on for years. She seemed to be the only mistress I could not drive away with my pessimistic musings and constant mood swings. She desperately tried to keep me within her clutches day in, and day out. But the pain I felt could never truly be sent away, and I found more joy within the arms of the one who built the walls around my heart, and then locked herself inside. This was, of course, before she swallowed the key.
You see, my life-long battle with depression has not been without casualty. The rollercoaster upon which my emotions ride has been enough to keep a man of any strength walking upon eggshells like landmines. But I’m in no way the most graceful of beings, and the explosions are messy. I often find myself lost in the sound of settling for someone I’m not. I find that the same old broken record is the one frequenting the turntable my life has turned out to be. It’s scratched and cracked, and never really held the most beautiful of music to begin with. I like to imagine it as an artists first piece. Raw and true, but nonetheless imprecise. God spent no extra time fine-tuning the EQ on the night of my birth. He didn’t wake and say, “Today I will paint a masterpiece for all the world to marvel at and examine in awe and excitement.” No, at the end of the day, he blew out the candles placed indistinctly around his home and said to himself, “Today was a day, just like any other. Riddled with disappointments and short-comings. But I did what I do, and this creation will live the same way.” And so I do. I’m lost within the same old feelings. I’m trapped doing the only things I have ever found myself to be somewhat capable of doing well. I sing the same old tune, pluck the same old strings. I don’t take up a paintbrush and aspire to create something beautiful. A masterpiece for all to behold in wonder. I take up my pen and create what I see. My thoughts and feelings which no one but myself can truly decipher and understand. I don’t fine tune a lens to make a person or place seem more beautiful than they truly are, I freeze them within the frame of how they’re meant to be. I have no true way with words, but an honesty in my thought. I walk across the sands of mediocrity, grain after grain passing between my toes, but none of them are gold. You see my dilemma? Can you grasp the downside to the life I lead? I don’t think you can. Because you are not me.
You, my friend, were not there when he touched me. You were not there the days that I was beaten down emotionally, the barricades around my emotional stability toppling brick by brick. You were not with m when I traveled mile after mile to find the sanctuary of her love again. You were not within my heart the day she spoke those words of departure softly into my ear, and then swiftly found comfort within the arms of another. You were not there all the nights I’ve cried, and every day while I slowly died. You were never there, and that is precisely my point. You know not the trials and tribulations of my seventeen years. And you never will.
