Jun 8th, 2011, 04:41 PM
I remembered why I came here.
I remembered why I came here.
It was to help a friend in need. I joined the fray to bail him out.
And you tore me apart. Your faces twisted into grim visages and you feasted on my hapless flesh while I tried to shield Lygurgus from you.
How much humanity in yourselves are you all ignoring by being your callous selves from one end of the year to the other on this site?
Maybe I should show you the part of yourself you've been missing:
Empathy.
There, now you can feel as emotionally abused and manipulated by me as I've been by you. Think about your families and the people you love. Think of who you miss and who you let slip between your fingers. Think of the ones whose lives and families you threaten just to laugh at as they cower in fear.
Then, maybe, you'll feel like me. Only, I don't get to see them again. I drove them away with unhealthily held anger I never purged from being wounded in my childhood. No one stepped in to help. When I should have been learning to love people as they are, I was being taught that I should fight back, that I should fight dirty, and that it's my fault I'm picked on. ("We can't fight your battles, Don") THANKS, FAMILY! THANKS SO MUCH FOR LOVING AND PROTECTING ME. When you push someone away enough, one day they'll stop beckoning. They did.
I didn't kill my friends. One killed herself while she was angry with me for saying she needed to be a better role model for her kid. All she wanted to do was drink. I didn't even see her do it- she shut me out and did it, and then I found out about it, as Tadao says, "a day late and a dollar short". In one case, it was a whole three months after it happened that I knew. How would you like to know that someone you were dating died after a big fight you had with them... 20 days before, in an attempt to extend the olive branch, you wished her a Merry Christmas on IM?...and you only found out 3 months after her body was cold that you had been typing words that would never be read? How would that make you feel? Like you weren't a good enough friend that she kept it from you in the most final and unpreventable way there is? BINGO! "Hmmm, think I'll carbon monoxide myself casually and let my boyfriend know sometime in late Spring".
What about your other friend, who, 5 years earlier and without warning, finished his shift, and then went home and shot himself in the head after listening to your music which he said he wasn't in the frame of mind to listen to, but which you insisted he listen to anyway? His brother called the next day. "Your manager can't come in to work this morning, Don. He's not going to make it. He...He passed." And then you listened to the answering machine message, which served as his final words to you, ever: "just do the best you can, and that's all anyone can ask". NO. All anyone can ask is that you STAY ALIVE FOR FIVE SECONDS while someone is trying to talk sense into you.
And then you watched the strain your boss's death put on the relationship with your girlfriend to the point that she couldn't take your inability to process grief, so she dumped you?! Then, and only then, are you actually alone in the world.
I can't stay here, because I have too big of a heart to weather the abuse. I couldn't even handle removing a trap from a tiny mouse's face two months ago. I didn't realize it was going to come down right in the middle of the little guy's forehead and spray blood. I watched its death rattle, trapped between the wall and a bin. Picked it up by the tail, not realizing the trap was heavier than his little body was. He squirmed; I shuddered, set him outside on the patio, hoped he would make it. I don't like to kill things. I'm not a murderer, or a stalker, or a criminal. I'm a human being and I enjoy the company of others. I'm a social animal and I feel pain when I see it in someone's eyes. And I want to help them...If you can't do that, then you should be ashamed to call yourself a person. You're a thing with instincts. I hide my sensitivity behind meanness, but that doesn't mean it's not still there. It's always been. I am the shape of utter agony at times. I had to quit singing because of my tongue ulcers, so I couldn't even vent. I had no outlet for anger. That's when I found comedy. If I couldn't laugh, I'd cry like that video probably made you do.
I can't be funny right now because I'm grieving everything I've lost in the past five years. A lot of stuff. I've weathered several deaths in my family, been shut out of my industry because people thought my sense of humor was rude, worked my ass off for three years on a project that turned out not to mean a whole lot, been through several break-ups because I was an emotional yo-yo, and- during all of this- been treated like absolute shit by the general public nearly every day for many hours, despite not having the coping skills to deal directly with people I don't know. Then, when I got OFF work, I continued to be treated like garbage by strangers on the internet. Despite how hard I worked on the music and tried to get it into online stores- "THANKS, DON! I'LL JUST DOWNLOAD IT!" - and how many hours I sat, and sweated under 100 degree lights in the Summer, in a room without ventilation, trying to imbue inanimate clay figures with a life force I didn't even have, myself.
So think what you will, about this "Don Carlson", and how much fun it is to pick on him, and belittle him, and ruin his music and animation. But don't forget- you don't actually know him, and at the end of the day he has feelings and the most basic of rights to lead his life as he sees fit- and that's not for YOU to decide. It's my life. Get the hell out, or contribute something to it. You'll be surprised at how much you'll get back when you do.
I am broken hearted and a little bent out of shape, but I am loyal to my friends. That's what brought me here in the first place. You'd see that if you knew me. I'm always inconveniencing myself to make someone else's life more comfortable. All I ask is that if you want me gone, know me first. Then decide. You never know who you might meet if you just give them time to blossom.
I leave you now, with a bunch of fat old women bowling.
]
Because that's what you came here for and expect of me- mocking peoples' happiness, no matter how simple and beautiful it is.
By the way, I have four cats. I love them dearly. Not a day goes by that I don't cuddle with the fat black and white one and scritch behind his ears. Cats are the best, they just spray everything. I'd love to have them as kittens again. No pain, no old age settling into their bones... Just young and free like I wish I was. I'd give anything to come home to someone who loves me. Instead, I come home to my cats. Soon, I won't even be able to do that. If home is where your heart is, I left mine in a dingy basement in Ohio. I left because she cheated on me. Should have stayed and forigven her. Then maybe I'd feel whole enough to crack funny jokes about things and stuff.
Well, you know how God likes to test us. It's pretty horrible, and the doctors said that that the chemotherapy didn't work, and that I have to do it again... I'm just grateful that Jesus loves me enough to let me not be dead already