Dear Sir or Madam,

In this world we presume many ambitions. We make many observations such as (a) everyone's aloneness (there really are no categories, you know. Everyone is so alone — the basic, essential state of humankind); (b) the paradox that is communication — the built-in answer to that feeling of aloneness.

Communication itself is what baffles the multitude. It is both so difficult and so simple. Of all men's fears, I think that men are most afraid of being what they are — in direct communication with the world at large. They fear reprisals, the most personal of which is that they "won't be understood."

. . . Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty — trying to communicate themselves, understood or not -- miracles have happened.

— Excerpt from Program Note for "A Concert of Sacred Music" (1965), Duke Ellington

I remember sometime in high school driving down a street in the town I grew up in with my older brother. I was describing the anger and pain I felt and I was consumed by the realization of how unjust it was. How unfair that I would be chosen out among what I assumed to be my worry free peers. I droned on and on when my brother contributed an idea to the conversation which I consider to be one of my first run ins with dark truths. Dark truths are these axiomatic principles discovered through experience which reveal to a curious mind something true about the universe which most people are unable to assimilate into their consciousness. This inability is a direct result of natural selection as I believe it to be a survival skill. One cannot (or should not) take on more pain than they can handle.

The dark truth my brother revealed to me that day as we rode down Buena Vista Avenue was that all the trauma about which I was complaining and the resulting anger and pain which I was articulating had molded me. It made me smart and persistent and independent and resilient. It had conditioned me to pain and difficulty in a way that made life otherwise seem easy. The evidence I've seen lends itself to this conclusion that trauma and abuse early in life seem to correlate with intelligence and various useful attributes later in life. Well in the interest of full disclosure the evidence seems to suggest that it either makes you highly successful or severely mentally ill.

There is a certain amount of survivors guilt anyone who survives all that has to deal with. It is especially difficult to reconcile my own escape from misery in the context of my own sense of worthlessness. The guilt is magnified under the magniscope of my own self hatred. Because of this I have spent much of the past several years in remission from life. I have hesitated to engage in much living due to the struggle within me. I believe I am at this moment emerging from that struggle and I want to say some things.

You should know that I do not forgive you. I am bursting with anger and have been spilling it about haphazardly without purpose and I now intend to aim it at its deserving maker. You are pitiful. We all have our troubles and you failed in what I consider to be the single most important code among those of us who have been hurt, do not hurt your children. We walk around with this terrible scar and while I feel great sympathy for your pain you are just as bad as them when you allow the great sickness to be inherited by your children. You did that and because you did you are despicable. You deserve nothing but contempt and even that is generous.

And despite the dark revelation via autmobile on Buena Vista Avenue I do not credit you with the results. What you did nearly killed me and still could. I am what I am in spite of you not because of you. I have come to understand something deeply important about myself. Yes I am filled with self hate and worthlessness (which you put there), yes I have thus far fallen short of my own expectations but there is something else that I am. I am the great defiance which lifted me from certain death and removed myself from your influence. I am the great survivor which navigated the treacherous waters of poverty and life to this shore of adulthood, nebulous though it may be. I am a massive talent which despite your best attempts to subdue and destroy, persists.

There is within me a great flame which can not be extinguished. It has kept me warm throughout my life's bitter cold nights. I have spent much of the past several years convincing myself it was gone or dormant and in its absence resigned myself to seek a simple relief of the pain. That is no longer enough. I demand more than relief from pain, I demand to live. I will set my fire loose upon you if you stand in the way again, as I did before. And while it is a fragile rebirth, I dare you to threaten it.