You don’t know me, but I want to explain myself to you. I want you to understand the transformations I’ve undergone in my lifetime. I want you to respect the improvements that have been made to my psyche, my soul, because I want you to appreciate my point of view.

What I am discovering, though, is that having a story to tell is more difficult than having nothing to say. Wanting to be accepted and understood is harder than begging to be left alone.

But after staring for hours (literally! hours) at this blank computer screen, squeezing my brain for the slightest drop of inspiration, I have come to the glum realization that I’m probably not going to be successful.

There are so many obstacles to writing. Knowing where to begin. Knowing where to end. Knowing what it is, exactly, that you are trying to say. Dealing with the panicked alarm that comes once it occurs to you that, even if you do know exactly what to say, you don’t exactly know how to say it. Somehow finding the courage to move forward, anyway. Realizing that “courage,” at least in this instance, isn’t the right word, as it isn’t “bravery” that you’re displaying so much as it is “fuck it, I’m tired of staring at a blank screen, so I’m going to start writing something, anything, because I’m not walking away from this without at least one goddamn sentence in the books” attitude, which is hardly anything to boast about. Then you hate yourself for using the word “courage” in the first place. Suddenly you have to overcome the obstacle of wanting to delete all that you’ve written. (You could just change the word “courage” to something else, but at this point you’re tense, frustrated, and prone to irrational emotional outbursts. Because you’re writing.) And I haven’t even begun to mention to distraction caused by the cats. It never fails that right as I’m in the middle of a cohesive thought, one of them will jump onto the desk, purring, lay on the keyboard and stick her butt in my face. You know. Because she loves me.

I’m telling you, writing is hard.

So what exactly am I trying to say?

…

(Thirty minutes later…)

Okay. Maybe the direct approach was the wrong strategy. I mean, the day’s already half over. Let’s try a different tack.

I endured a hearty share of physical, sexual & verbal abuse as a child–the trifecta of emotional disturbance, if you will–and so what that means is, regardless of whatever other gifts and talents I had to share with the world, by the time I was a young adult my life was dominated by two powerful core beliefs:

1)I do not trust a single motherfucking one of you.

and

2)Yes, I know, I get it. I am not good enough.

Every moment of my adult life has been spent trying to overcome the harsh outlooks that were imprinted upon me in my formative years. Needless to say, just like writing, it’s been hard.

You may find this hard to believe, but when you do not trust anyone, and when you know in your heart that you’re a worthless human being, it negatively colors everything that you do. (No, really. It does!)

Let me give you just a couple of examples:

When you’re distrustful, it’s not like you run up to people on the street with eyeballs bulging, tendons in your neck tightening as from spittle-covered lips you scream, “I don’t trust you!” into their faces. (Except for perhaps one or two vagrants who do that in New York City. But, even then, after sixteen, seventeen hours of such public behavior, I hear those aggressively non-trusting people are eventually whisked away to a mental facility for “evaluation.”) No, it doesn’t quite work like that. You’re simply…wary. Distant. You’re quick to jump on any contradictions that a person reveals about themselves. You bring a lot of sarcasm to the table. (“Oh, really?” Yes, really. “Thanks, I had no idea.“) People may try to get close to you, but eventually give up once they realize that you’re an impregnable fortress of solitude. (This tends to really disappoint the people that wished to pregnate you.)

When you think that you’re a worthless human being, you have no ambition. Ambition is for people who feel like they can accomplish things, and you clearly cannot accomplish anything because you are worthless. Worthless people content themselves with simple jobs and menial labor and staying out of the limelight. If you develop friendships of any kind, they are typically, sadly, dysfunctional. At my lowest point, at the time I felt the absolute worst about myself, I was surrounded by some of the most depressingly awful people you could ever hope to find. The hopeless alcoholics, embittered by the pain of life. The cynics who rarely had a kind word to say about anything. You surround yourself with the disgusting and the undesirable in an effort to blend in, and to avoid anything too positive or upbeat. If I did have any positive, outgoing, warm friends, my negativity and sarcasm constantly tested their will until they eventually drifted away.

Basically, with an outlook such as the one I entered adulthood with, you’re a wreck. You’re a disaster waiting to happen. You’re a ticking time bomb. You’re a shell of a human being. You’re all of those clichés and then some. Consider yourself lucky if, as you’re enduring that blackness, you are smart enough to sense that something is wrong with your life. Of course, being incapable of believing in yourself or others you have absolutely no idea how to fix it…but at least you’re aware that something is wrong. That awareness is a gift. Otherwise, you’ll simply spiral down the toilet into the cesspool of life until you’re nothing but a toe tag in the county morgue.

(Editor’s note: At this point in the show, this is when the wildly ebullient MC would emerge from the stage, smiling and clapping his hands. “HOW’S EVERYONE DOING, HUH? Everyone having a good time?” Then, as it dawns on him that all the women in the first three rows are crying and the men that brought them are looking furious, the MC would gulp nervously, lick his lips and, ahh, tell some lame joke about prostitutes in Brazil that has a punchline like “Oh! I thought you said all the hookers had ‘Gone to Rio!'” There would then be dead silence. Beer bottles would clink in the back of the room. One drunk at the bar would bark a single note of laughter, which would sound as loud as a gunshot in the otherwise silent room. Finally, one of the men with a crying girlfriend would yell, “Get off the stage!” In other words, there’s no saving this essay. Be sure to tune in for Part 2.)

*Rosanne Cash. King’s Record Shop, 1987. Sony Music Distribution. Composed by Benmont Tench.