I so want to write something you’ll find endearing, funny even, that would urge you to share it with a friend, who, going through a rough patch, would be somehow uplifted by my wit and charm. You’d both laugh, hug, and your friend would look into your eyes and say a heart-felt: thank you. Well, that ain’t happenin’ today.
Count yourself lucky if you have a civil relationship with your parents. If you can visit on holidays and not end up in an emergency room or on a therapist’s couch, be thou grateful.
It’s not that bad. We aren’t drug addicts passed out with needles in our veins, or asleep under a table in the neighborhood tavern, or amnesiatic and half naked behind a dumpster. We’re able-bodied with roofs over our heads, a computer, TV, paid-off car and mortgage and even a small annuity. The wounds I’m licking are of the virtual and psychological variety. The dashed dreams that should have swirled their ways down the toilet decades ago but have lingered embarassingly overdue and pathetic in a person of my age, who should be looking at burst bubbles in the rear-view mirror, those dreams, that now release me a little too high off the ground, smirk unsympathetically as I hit the cold cement of O Pullleeeze Miss Get-Over-Its back stoop. Your mother hates you. So the fuck what?
And that’s just it. Everybody’s got something stickin’ in their craws. Join the club. Ok, here I am, where do I sign? Have I paid enough dues or is there more skin needed in this game? Looky over yonder at missy wanted to be a star. And over there to him who really was a star but all done forgot him now. Time rolls on by with or without you, it don’t much matter to time. It don’t much matter to anyone, so you might as well pick yourself up and get going along with the rest of the anonymous insignificant and otherwise biomasses of the world marching ineluctably to that common ground we’ll all inhabit someday. Some sooner than others. If there is something to make it all worth while to you, honey, you best be doing that. I hereby grant you permission to be your own person and find some joy in breathing the free air and being whoever you are. You are enough. Life fashioned you for no other purpose than to realize you are here and maybe say thanks for the look see.
I never could make that woman happy. Come to find out there was nothing I could ever do to make that woman happy because happy is an inside job. So, I gotta just chose to be happy myself and let mom be whatever it is she’s being half way across the continent. If you owe anything to anyone it is to be a decent loving human being yourself and try to infect others with that contagion of hope and release that comes from finding a creative outlet and sharing it with others. It’s okay to be you. It’s better to hurt anyone if it can be helped. So straighten up and fly baby, fly on out into the world and sing your song. Remember, Jesus said to shake the dust from your sandals and move on, so it’s okay. Be on your way. Should you stay and keep trying to save that drowning somebody who just does not want to learn how to swim? Please decide before you end up drowned as well.