Robin Williams made me do it

It was a hard day, and I say that selfishly, if not even sadistically. I say it because the death of Robin Williams ripped a bandage off a wound I've been trying to hide. I know I need to get back on the stage. I know I need to be funny. I need to. As of late I've cowered, and in that weakness have emerged only to be bitter and tired. It's the face of aging on the inside that's the ugliest. I've hidden behind menial chores and mopping floors. I vacuum, I mop and I swear that I want to sell the house and move. Move where? Move to where the hiding might hide you some more? 

Listen, when you know you can do something, and when you know you can do something that people might enjoy, then do it. I know death and I know suicide. That's where the morbid, selfish, sadist side of me thinks of those who've killed themselves (or tried) and, because of their deed, I keep my dying only a fantasy. Sometimes it's after a great gig when I feel I should go out on top, and others it's just bad. It's bad. It is bad. I won't kill myself because I have Sarah. And I have kids. And even though kids can grow up without a father, I know that one of these children will one day deal with depression, and I want to be there. I want them to know that when they feel it--when they feel the tread wearing off on the long hot journey that is that sadness, that they can call. They can call day or night and I'll be there to tell them it's OK. They're not alone. Now lets go outside and have your heart remind your head about living again. It could be (in a theory I'm coming up with right now) that your brain spends day and night telling your body to live, but every now and again it needs some feedback from below: "You're not alone; I'm alive and intend to stay that way."

It's a mystery how our heads are part of our bodies and yet we still talk to it in the third person. I talk to myself in the third person, like even though I'm me I don't have control over the outcome of what I do. I feel the negative thoughts; the bullet relieving the pressure on the brain, and I rejoice in how easy it would be. I would never chide anyone for thinking about it, or use some terrible cliche about a temporary problem and a permanent solution. For a moment, go with me into that place that kills people. Take the best day you've ever had. Take the elation and electricity of say, a basketball player "in the zone," and that's where you are winning at whatever you do. Take all those chemicals and all those internal accolades and happy tears, and then turn them around. Make inverse the cheers and turn bitter the euphoria. Squeeze the celebration out of every gut and leave yourself empty and retching on the crosswalk of expectations. Everyone's disappointed. Turn off the electricity and shrink the elation, and then stand over the sad and shriveled relic before letting it breathe relief in its last breath. You're not even you anymore. You're not killing yourself; you're killing whatever spiteful piece of shit you've dehumanized and demonized in countless bad days of self-flagellation. Suicide becomes a necessary homicide. A mercy kill.

And I've imagined that last clip of horror when you realize it's not.

That's helped.That sadistic son of a bitch in me. 

But I can't kill it. I won't. The band aid ripped off tonight tells me that I've got to be done crying in my car. I've got to balance the good and the bad. I've got to make the demons work for me. They're there, and they won't go away, but somehow, some way, they make us artists. They make us lovers. They burn magma out of us until we can shape it in our hands and put it on display. They make us want to make others feel good. That makes us feel good. And for the win--and for Robin and countless others--I'll do what I'm supposed to do. As I am me, and that dude has a lot of work to do before he goes.