To Henry Rollins

Question:  How did you get in my brain?  How can you write such hauntingly beautiful, fucked-up shit?  How can you write depressing, soul-crushing rants, and then drop a love poem in the next breath?

You said that writing was the stitching that kept you from exploding – we have that in common.  But sometimes the words just get in the fucking way.  No matter what I say or write is misconstrued or misinterpreted or ignored or just left to float for a second in the open air, and then it just dissipates.  I delusionally think that my words and thoughts have import, but … maybe they’re just a convenient medium for my existential angst.

You also wrote that silence is the most powerful sound you’ve ever heard, and I want to punch you in the face for being so right.  I could tell you about my boyfriend who just broke up with me and then followed with abject and total silence, but it’s fucking embarrassing.  I’m 45.  I’m supposed to be old enough to know better.  I’ve already been married and had kids, and it didn’t work.  I was celibate for a decade, and then I tried again, only to be left feeling like a stupid 15-year-old girl who didn’t know any better.  I agree with your line, “I can’t take any more beatings like this.”  Allowing people in is self-imposed cruelty.  People are harmful.  They lift me up, and then strappado me when I let them in.

Ready for some irony?  I teach high school.  I like it most of the time.  I give great advice to teenagers, advice I can’t even take for myself.  I reach out and listen to them and change their lives, but I can’t listen to myself or change my own life. 

Example:  why the hell am I writing a letter to you?  The simple answer is that I’m reading your book (The Portable Henry Rollins), and you’re the first person who has understood me in like a thousand years, but you don’t even know me.  You have a gift for just breaking through all the bullshit and laying it on the table, regardless of how gruesome or honest or sincere it might be.  I try to do that on my blog, but I’m pretty sure no one reads it, because people are afraid of honesty.  Honesty often comes out sounding like clinical depression or unabashed rage.  I don’t write when I’m happy.  I write when I need therapy, which I can’t afford on a school teacher’s salary. 

But I digress.  My intent was to thank you for writing a book that came to me at a point in my life when I desperately need it.  (I’ve never read any of your books before now – just listened to Black Flag and got angry-drunk back in the 80s.)  I just wanted you to know that all your rambling is a beautiful mess, and I wish I could pull myself out of this self-medicating coma of liquor and prescription drugs long enough to care to publish my writing.  I just can’t.  Yet.  I’ll either be dead soon from organ failure, or I’ll come up to breathe again. 

Either way, your book has helped me find some much needed air, so thank you.