Wandering Stars

I know Michael Stipe was trying to offer solace to the hopeless when he sang in that nasal voice, "Everybody hurts . . . sometimes." If that weren't true, there would be no songs like "Everybody Hurts," and more songs like "Everybody Feels Hunky Fucking Dory." So yeah, at some point in our lives, everybody hurts. That's a fact.

But what's also a fact is that knowing everybody hurts doesn't fucking help you, does it? If everybody had been slammed at a crosswalk by a drunk driver going 50 in a 30 zone, you probably aren't going to say, "Hey, my legs are so fractured they might as well be dust, my spine is broken, and I can see my back without turning my head, but that's OK because everybody hurts sometimes." No, what you'll probably be saying (or screaming) is, "Someone please come shoot me in the fucking face because this pain is so intense I'd rather die than live another minute."

Yeah, I know, your friends are trying to help when they say everyone has had their heart broken. But that isn't the point. The point, which has been made with such a startling clarity through such heart wrenching pain, is that you have made someone first in your heart, that you have let her/him get so close to you that she/he knows more than you about yourself, and that she/him has decided to totally burn you down from the inside out so that there's nothing left to give anyone else. That someone else may have felt something close to this in the past means fuck all to you right now.

And yeah, I know, people get heartbroken, fall in love again, get married or remarry, even those who scream and wail how they will never fall in love again. Those are the ones you hear about.

But we also know there are broken, sad, angry people who actually do not ever fall in love again, who have been torhced and burned too many times that they are merely embers waiting to die out.

And to say you always have a choice which person to be is also bullshit.

Yes, there are men who are born sociopathic, who are charming and debonair and will break a lady's heart without thinking so long as they get the nookie. But most men aren't born that way. Instead, there are men who keep giving all they can in a relationship, and it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the fact that those men will get played, over and over again, getting used for comfort until the hot thing or the new thing or the I'm finding myself thing comes along. And in the end, getting burned over and over again, there's nothing left to give. And all we hear are complaints about men not wanting to commit, about not giving enough.

We are a nation of kicked dogs, and you wonder why we snarl.