We all start with a blank slate: an open mind, bright, fresh smiles, innocent eyes gazing at the world in all it’s glory. Ready to jump in the car, take the ride, see where the road goes.

For me, my mind is my own worst enemy. It’s a wellspring of tortured artist sentiment that’s served me well over the over the years in creative endeavors, yet haunts me nightly. Daring me to look closer, take the walk. For 40 years I turned my eyes the other way.

It all starts with one crack. The younger you are when the first crack appears, the more it influences the growth and habits.

Here’s my first crack: I fell in love with a girl when I was 14. She had the most hauntingly sad, but beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. She committed suicide when she was 15.

When you stick your hand in a fire, stub your toe, or take a tumble down the stairs because you were running too fast… you never forget those things. They change you. They change how you navigate similar situations. Your cells remember the pain, and withholds on your behalf.

When the very first girl you’d ever had feeling for commits suicide… It rips something vital inside. The confusion, the hurt: that eventually passes. In its place is a persistent feeling that you are somehow poison --that your caring will somehow bring about the worst thing ever-- just grows.

It’s been a long and rough ride full of the worst missteps and adventures. Only in the last 10 years (I’m 52 now) have finally brought peace into my life. I can thank a particularly persistent therapist with helping my take a good hard look into myself to understand the somewhat broken clockwork that is me.

You probably don’t want to peruse these files. God knows I didn’t. But I am an open book these days: it’s the only way I’ve found to be able to sleep at night. So if you’d like to write, PM your email and I will reply.