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Over the years, I received sympathy, of course. Such writing does not come from a well-balanced, happy soul. However, I cannot recall (though I think there might have been one person prior to FDR) anybody truly sympathizing with the horrible situation I had to endure and directing me to seek professional help.

Despite this, I’ve had a very strong sense for quite some time now that I needed to seek out a therapist that could help me unravel the twistings of my psyche, but I could never find the right person, or I didn’t have the money, or so many other excuses out there.

I once begged a doctor to just give me some pills so that I wouldn’t feel suicidal. He didn’t give me a prescription, but instead sent me to the ER of a local hospital. After waiting there for several hours, I was finally seen by a grief counselor who said something like, “We don’t really deal with your kind of case.” That is to say, I wasn’t discovered holding a razor to my throat, so I wasn’t considered that sort of risk.

So, why now? Why am I unearthing all of this now? Why did I delete the emails when I deleted them? I could have deleted them years ago, or I could have let them sit on my hard drive for another decade. Why that action, then? Why the poetry, now?

I’ve moved to a new apartment, and this new apartment is quite different from the old apartment. The most significant difference to me is that it is not in the mountains near a body of water, in a dingy little town that’s an hour from everything significant.

The poem, “Volcano,” speaks of a dragon who can’t seem to help but hurt people and destroy things. Such a creature surely could not change his nature, so the natural consequence of feeling bad about this is to escape to a remote area where he can no longer hurt anybody.

The fallacy in that analogy is that it is not my nature to be in constant pain, nor is it my nature to lash out and hurt others. It is no more my “nature” to do so than it is in the “nature” of a pitbull to be violently aggressive.

No, to turn to such ends requires the continuous infliction of harsh and brutal abuse to the point of trauma.

Do I sweep my arms too broadly? Take another look at my poetry. Take another look at how I viewed myself. This is not because I was born broken, but because I was born, then broken.

The analogy of the dragon logically concludes with, “I must flee,” but one can never flee the fire in one’s belly. Hence, the dragon is always fleeing, always escaping, but never able to completely escape.

So, I am seeing some parallels between the behavior of my parents and my own. I ran to the mountains, where few other people resided. However, this is not therapeutic, but escapist!

Moving out of the shit mountain town I was living in was a move out of the paradigm of my parents, which induces a great deal of stress, but is fundamentally necessary for my continued growth and good health.

I am not a dragon by nature. There are hundreds–if not thousands–of stories which have as their central theme, “James is a broken creature.”

Among them are:
James is inconvenient.
James does not deserve affection.
James does not deserve love.
James does not deserve attention.
James deserves to be hit.
James deserves to be screamed at.
James deserves to be threatened.
James deserves to be scared.
James does not deserve to be taken to the doctor.
James deserves to be isolated.
James does not deserve normal relationships with girls.
James does not deserve to feel affection.
James does not deserve to be a sexual being.
James does not deserve to see his parents’ admiration.
James deserves to see his parents’ hatred for him.
James deserves to see his parents’ hatred for each other.
James deserves to see his brother treated better than him.
James does not deserve privacy.
James does not deserve boundaries.
James does not deserve to have desires.
James does not deserve to express his feelings.
James deserves to have his feelings denied.
James deserves to have his feelings minimized.
James deserves to have his experience denied.
James deserves to have his experience minimized.
James deserves to be humiliated.
James deserves to be mocked.
James deserves to be set up.
James deserves to be in pain.
James deserves to be made fun of.
James deserves to be sad.
James does not deserve to be happy.
James does not deserve to live.
James deserves to die.