I don’t mean bound and gagged and literally Guantanamo Bayed. I don’t mean tortured like those fifty shades of a nondescript color books.

I mean emotionally scarred.

Sure, I am PLENTY emotionally scarred to have a NEED for an outlet, like writing out the crazy shit that keeps me up at night, but I’m not injured enough to actually be very GOOD at it.

Please understand, I fully recognize how this might seem insensitive to those tortured souls who have lived through pain that I couldn’t begin to understand. That is not my intention. I’m sure they would give up their talent to live a life that hit them with a normal amount of pain instead of getting slammed with tidal waves of it.

When I read something truly funny, or watch a comedian who can make me laugh until I cry, I very nearly always feel the pain that goes along with the humor. These are some people who have seen some shit, you know?

I’m not saying that I wish my life had been harder. I’ve had my share. I was raised by a diagnosed psychotic who actually had electrodes stuck to his head and shocked when I was very young. That’s a pretty severe level of crazy right there. My most prominent childhood memory is that my stomach hurt.

It still does.

That still doesn’t take me out of the middle of the road here. If I were ever cloned, my clones would be used as crowds on movie sets. You know, when you need a crowd as background. Nothing striking. Not too skinny and not too fat. Not too pretty and not unique. Just average. But get to know that crowd, just a little, and you’d find some quirkiness and loyalty that could take you a long way toward being completely enamored with the crowd..but mostly, it’s just a vanilla crowd.

I’m so fucking close. Sure, I’m pretty fucked in the head, but it’s just enough to spend most of my time frustrated.

When I was a kid, we lived in an old house in bad neighborhood in front of a cemetery. The basement in this house was creepy as fuck. I hated the basement. It was mostly open, but there were some nooks and crannies and a really dark room where they used to keep the coal for the coal burning furnace.

Would it have KILLED my parents to lock me in there for a day or two? Seriously, I’m pretty sure that would have given me the boost I need and in the long run, I don’t think it would have made THAT much difference in my pain or depression levels. And, I could have written the ‘Coal Room Chronicles’ or something.

But no, I just got the erratic, stress inducing father and mother who worked two jobs and spent the rest of her time in a zombie-like depression. Mostly, my sisters and I were  ignored, screamed at or silently disapproved of. It would have been a KINDNESS if my parents had shaved my head bald…just for one Summer.

I’m writing this because I’m stressed right now. I have to make a change. I can either make it now, or I will probably be forced to make it in the near future. Nothing LIFE shattering or anything…but still…pretty fucking big. I am distracting myself by going through the lists of things I could have done different over the past 3 decades. Reminding myself that if I had just followed my motherfucking BLISS, maybe things would be different and I wouldn’t have blinked my eyes and had 20 years go by working at job that I don’t really like all that much.

If I had been just a LITTLE more tortured, I’d be an artist living in the Sonoran Desert where I painted rocks and wrote funny, but wildly deep snippets on discarded pizza boxes.

So tell me…are you doing what you’ve always wanted to do, or is there a tortured (but not quite tortured enough) artist living in your head, too?