You need me

I've decided that what the world needs is a bit more of me and a little bit less of whatever it is you have when I am not around and taking up space in your sunlit world.

Sometimes I take a break from writing in this blog and when I do that I tend to regret it. Not because I am not taking this whole writing thing seriously. Not because I am worried that I am wasting my 'gift.' I stop writing because I lose my confidence. But I shouldn't stop writing just because I lose my confidence.

I should never worry about losing my confidence because no one is going to read this blog and only "get it" if what they read that day is actually well written. That's the thing I like about you. You take all this in with a shit grin just like me. Even though you know you are only reading some hack faux Bukowski wanna be.

You see past all the other guys needs for sentence structure and look right to the heart of things. For you and me it's all about feeling. And if sometimes I can't convey that feeling...well....you fill in the blanks for me. All because we have that kind of connection. You know what I am thinking right as I say it. You mouth the words as you read because you are thinking them too. You might even nod you head as you read this sentence.

I should have figured that out a long time ago, but I didn't.

The sad thing is that I am not quite as smart as I thought I was. The really sad thing is I am no longer even as smart as I used to be. As for the future? Things don't look good in the future.

You know for a long time I worried that somehow I had wasted my life. That I let down my parents or you. I don't worry about that anymore.

We both know I don't have any gifts to offer you. And I think that it is safe to assume that I am never going to go anywhere with this 'writing' thing as I have way too many issues and some of those issues include lack of talent.

But that's ok. Even if I have a hard time expressing things and clarifying the words I would like to use, and even if I can't seem to write down the things I want to say to you in some kind of logical order I know that you still get the gist of what I am saying, and I know that is enough for you, or otherwise you would still not come here after all these years.

The truth is you need me. You need to hear the things I tell you even if they are the topics are the same 5 things over and over again, even when I tell you then in essentially the same manner.

You need me because you are the emotional equivalent of a five year old. And I am the only adult you know in this world. And by adult I don't mean that I have health insurance*, wear Khakis**, and spend all day trying to be positive and productive. By adult I mean that I am the only person willing to tell you all the things you already know but are too afraid to say out loud because you worry they will all come true if you do.

*I don't go to the doctor. I am sure I have the AIDS. I have a sore throat and a runny nose.

My foot is turning green because of the ingrown toenail.

Every couple of days I bathe my feet in a bowl full of hydrogen peroxide. Sometimes the puss is yellow. Sometimes the puss is red with blood.

My toenail is seriously trying to cut my toe in half which I think would be an awesome experience.

I am running an experiment to see how long you can survive with an open wound on you body before the gangrene*** sets in. If you find out one day that I died. That I collapsed at my computer board from some kind of anabolic shock from the infection in my toe reaching my heart. I want you to know that it was because of you. It was all for you.

**I own only one pair of jeans and they are full of holes and the bottom of the cuffs are dirty from being dragged on the ground, because whenever I walk I drag my feet.

***There was of course that time that I saw a homeless man walking to a convenience store. Like all homeless people he wanted to buy beer. Like most homeless people in the summer he wore dirty cut off denim shorts and carried a cane.

Unlike most homeless his left leg was swollen to three of four times the size of a normal man's leg. His leg was a reptilian green. His leg had gone gangrene.

I've never seen a dead person. Not in real life anyway. Somehow I have avoided that.

(Unless you count the guy on the freeway that was trapped inside his car in a raging inferno...though for sure neither me nor my friend could swear that what we really saw was the skeleton of a man in flames.)

Anyway. I have never seen a dead person. But that homeless guy was as close as I have ever come to seeing a live dead person. I thought about turning my truck around and driving up to the beer mart and asking the guy if he knew how close to death he was. I was sure this guy did not realize that hospitals have to take you if you are dying and the have to work at you until they get you stabilized.

Maybe homeless guy knew about the medical services he could get, and maybe he just could not face having his leg amputated.

I remember watching the homeless man recede in the rear view mirror. I almost ran a red light. I kept thinking I need to call the police. Why has no one called the police?

I read something about the bystander effect in a social psychology class. But it still did nothing to effect the diffusion of responsibility that I felt that day.

We are all bystanders in this hostile world.

I am the psychology professor warning you.

You are me driving past a homeless guy with gangrene.

And the homeless guy? He's the future.