Emotional Off Switches

I have really tried to do one thing: to try and bring you the truth. You may not like the truth as I see it, but I will always tell you what is really on my mind.Still, you are likely already bored, so I better get to it before you click this off and just move on to the next entry.

In my letter to Santa, one of the things I asked for was an emotional off switch, just something to shut it all down for a while. Didn’t get that one, nor did anyone pony one up for my birthday, but I am still hopeful. It might still happen.What I am looking for is really not so rare, you know. A lot of people have one. They go from day to day, thinking life is purely about them and no one else. They grew up cold, and remained cold. Nothing really bothers them, except in as much as it might interfere with their day-to-day lives.

If you are one of those people, then just stop reading right here and now, and be thankful to any deity you believe in, even if it is the dollar, pound, or euro that you worship.

You may be irritated by the world around you not always remembering to cater to your every need and whim, but you are being spared something far worse: emotional loneliness.However, speaking to an artistic community as I hopefully am, I think that the bulk of you who have gotten this far will keep on reading, because you might just know a thing or two on the topic. It comes in a lot of different levels and flavors, you know. Your loneliness and my own might be very different things, but they are no less debilitating over the years.

So let’s take a moment to consider and acknowledge all of those folk who are going from one day to the next in a shroud of solitude, and would do anything in the world to shake it off, to be happy and fun and not have to be alone with their own thoughts night after night. Because they believe, just like I do, that there are some genuinely happy people out there, people who found that completion in their life, who are just as much into that person as that person is into them, and for whom the long view looks pretty shiny. Take a second and remember all of those who don’t, and raise a glass and salute the bravery with which they face their day to day lives:

· Consider all of those who didn’t get dealt a fair hand physically. Either they came out wrong, and something happened along the way, and no one wants to look at them, much less touch them.

· Give a thought to the girl who lets herself be the desperation fuck, the one you can call every couple of months and ask out and know that you are going to get some that night, and she lets herself go ahead and do it, because she misses the guy so much. Or maybe she doesn’t. Because deep down, she knows what she is to him, and she really detests him for it, but at least she won’t be home alone that night.

· How about the husband or wife who so utterly hate the creature they are married to, but have no way to break free. And let me tell you something, for some, there is no way, and so when they are alone they sit and take the long view of their lives, and know that this is it, it doesn’t get any fucking better from here, so just cry for a little while and settle in and just get used to it.

· Don’t forget the guy or the girl who carries the torch for that one person, that singular individual who is the sun and the stars and the moon to them. And that guy or girl would go through hell for the person, but the object of this person’s affections doesn’t even see them, except when it is convenient. Still, they put their pride and their dignity aside, even when sense, logic, and friends tell them to say "Go and fuck yourself" to this person, because they just keep holding out hope, even if it is for just one perfect day.

· How about this: how about that individual who has become so hardened and calloused by everything I have just described to you, who has built such a massive and fortified wall to keep themselves from getting hurt anymore, that they become unreachable. And they would give anything to be able to reach beyond that wall, but they have forgotten how.

· What about those who broke free, only to find that life on the other side, after you got rid of that horrible person in your life, is awfully damn cold. And they let themselves drift into things that they really shouldn’t have, because it beats another night of Law and Order reruns, because one more night of it and you really will go quite insane, you are sure of this.

· Lest we forget: we have all done things that were wrong. Some of us worse than others. Remember the folk who are so incapable of self-forgiveness that they lose the ability to see the good in others.

· Don’t forget the individual who finally faces the awful question "Are you afraid to go home?" Because now that loneliness they are so ashamed of is out there for all the world to see, and now it must be faced.

Oh, there a plenty more that we could talk about, and I will bet some of you are thinking of examples right now. Any of these examples, or combinations, make it awfully tough to keep on doing the dance called life, and it take one tough son of a bitch to keep it up sometimes. So finally, let’s raise a glass and a wish to the ones that don’t make it, who find the pills or the gun or the rope.

And I’ll tell you something, I don’t honestly believe they really wanted to die. I don’t really and truly believe that they wanted to end their existence on this earth and create such turmoil for their families. Some do, no doubt, but I think a lot really just wanted one thing: to shut the awful, howling, screaming silence of solitude off in their heads for just a little while, to just make it go away and give them a break. So before you point fingers and use words like "coward" try walking a crooked mile in their shoes, and see how happy you are.

PS—Don’t worry, OK? This is not a plea for help on my side, just an observation, like all the others I have made, just to maybe offer something worth thinking about.