I’ve been struggling with my words so hard the last few days. I’ve written several posts and deleted them all. I keep trying to free my tongue from the glue that holds it firmly to the roof of my mouth, to the hollows of my heart, to the wall of the dark pit of my mind. I said things last time that I itch to unsay, yet even as I die a little every morning when I wake up and find I haven’t made the smallest effort to take all my words back, I know they can’t be unsaid.  Not even if no one has read them. And people have read them.

The last week has brutalized me. Today has been one long pustulent pock on my spirit, on my everything. Nothing a million people haven’t had to deal with at the same exact time. We do this, us humans, we try to put everything in its place, tidy up the shit storms so the sewers catch as much excrement as possible, and we attempt to soothe our fragile selves with pillows made of unfulfilled promises and angel farts. We want so much to believe that life is more than this bed-pan existence, but this is IT. This is what we are.

Our bodies break down, rot, ooze, leak, ferment, fracture, and seek the lowest ground on which to burn to bones and ash.

I wrote songs about this when I was fourteen. I knew the truth when I was six which was the last time I shit my pants, not because I wasn’t potty trained but because I was scared as hell to be left to care for my baby sister and I knew, even then, that life was going to be so much more morally complicated than hurting inside when I was encouraged to salt snails and watch them die.

Every day I retreat deeper into the cave in which I hide my truth from you and everyone else. The world is too much for me. Too loud for me. I hear you all breathing from my pyre of nightmares as loud as if I was in your fucking mouths, assholes. I hear your disappointment from here and I’d care a little more if you were more honest with yourself.

The one law I still abide is love. Love for individuals. Love for non-human animals. Love for the lost, love for the dead, love for the unsteady. Love for the abandoned, love for the abused, love for the homeless. If I give you a dollar I don’t give a shit how you spend it. If I give you my coat I don’t care if you cut it up. Love is a thing you offer up without conditions or stipulations or contracts.

I see race, I see gender, I see religion, I see sexuality, I see body shape, I see style, I see all of what you show me whether you mean to or not. I see and I love and I appreciate and I celebrate everything that makes you the best possible person you can be and the things you were born to carry in spite of having not chosen for yourself. I see all of the things that make you YOU because there’s beauty and value in your skin, your spirit, your experiences, your personal expression, and your heart. The one law I still abide is love. I can love almost anything about you if you let me. I can love almost anything about you if you’re light is honest, your voice genuine, your spirit raw. I want to celebrate your hair, your skin, your eyes, your bravery, your weird taste, your love of strange perfume and funky artifacts.

If I make fun of your magnificent fluffy extreme ginger mullet it’s because you’ve accomplished something worthy of comment.  Don’t you get it? I can’t make fun of a magnificent mullet without a certain amount of actual admiration. I’m not the decider of all things good and fashionable. I’m just one lousy little person of medium height and a reasonable but not genius IQ. My opinion, like all other opinions of anything, is completely subjective and pretty much bullshit. Except for the part where I love when anyone can distinguish themselves in any amusing and interesting way that isn’t hurtful to others.

I want to say: WEAR YOUR TIGHT SHINY DISCO PANTS, LET THAT CAMEL-TOE BE SEEN FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA, SHAKE THAT MULLET LIKE YOU KNOW EVERYONE IS AMAZED WITH IT, ROCK THAT FROSTY FEATHERED DO LIKE YOU’RE IN AN 80’S ROCK VIDEO, EAT THAT JELLO LIKE IT’S THE BEST FUCKING FOOD ON THE PLANET, RECITE BIBLE VERSES TO YOUR FAMILY LIKE THEY’RE BALLADS FOR GUILTY CONSCIENCES, EMBRACE DRUGS LIKE THEY FIX SPIRITS, JACK OFF TO RICHARD SIMMONS WORKOUTS BECAUSE – WHO DOESN’T?!

Whoever you are, BE YOU. I swear I’ll appreciate you (even if I don’t understand you) if you’re the most genuine self you can be.

There are so many things about me that you can laugh at, enjoy guiltily, put on a billboard, or report to Jon Stewart to try and get him back to the Daily Show, and I won’t hold any of it against you. I’m a ridiculous person in so many ways. But I beg of you, if you find me homeless, if you give me a dollar, don’t put conditions on how I spend it.

Don’t make a contest out of human suffering. Don’t tell people they can’t possibly understand your experiences because when you do that you effectively say they have never suffered, that their experiences are inferior, that even if they care about you they can’t ever care about you enough or appropriately or in a way you accept.

Suffering is something all humans experience.

Love is something all humans should experience.

You are beautiful to me.