Bigbrotherdadunclegrandpaboss

Dear Sir,

When you said "Wayward Youth," you weren't kidding. I guess my interrogative habits betray me. Believe me, this isn't the first time I've hurled painfully earnest questions at the unsuspecting passerby. In some ways, I'm probably too honest for my own good.

But isn't it lucky I have people like you to keep me from running out into the street?

Anyway, this is more or less a thank you and a please. Thing is: I'm not sure if I'm going to make it without this emotional thought training. Thing is, my life feels fake plastic and cardboard and so completely fucking pointless and stark, without my having the capacity to empathize, and I *know* the only way for me to develop it is for someone to help me into it. A book isn't going to do it, a fucking seminar isn't going to do it, and I know an hour a week with the shrink of my choice isn't going to do it. All of those things keep me in my own head, which is unfortunately vacant of all things empathetic in nature.

I need you to keep asking me the right questions, so I can start asking them of myself. I have to deconstruct the wall.

See, I can SENSE other people's pain, but I can't absorb it, I can't jump into their shoes. I can talk and relate and offer sympathetic advice, but I can't empathize. And if I don't start soon, I'm scared it will come too late.

I feel like a Replicant, circa 1980-something.


Please help me.
I know you have 80 other innocent civilians on your list of People- to- Save-before-Lunch,
and if you can't squeeze me in, you know I understand.

Love you a million,

Narco Robo


I know it sounds weird, but I shudder to think what might've happened if you hadn't found me first.

--by SleepUnwisely, Mars., 09/07/2008