I now conclude, dejectedly and defeated, that my brain has been slowly severed from my emotions, a secret divorce of which I was not told, but feel deeply. Those sensitive, delicate receptors in my grey, soggy head were slashed by dulled razors and finished off by gunshots. There is now only a stringy and mangled pathway with deep crimson walls, lined with slithering tendons hanging like stalactites, that I know not how to traverse nor to find the way back. I would like to believe there is a bridge of soft tissue somewhere that's can guide me home, but as time casts more shadows and moons sink into still deserts my hopes dwindle. The amygdala, the brain's major center for processing emotional events, was vacated some time ago and is now a vacuous office deemed condemned long ago littered with empty bottles of Mickey's, needles, and empty orange prescription bottles. If you look hard enough you may find a white four-barred xanax, please return to owner. There is an occasional traveler that is crafty enough to slip past the drunken doorman, who staggers those moldy hallways making sure nothing but the inanimate gets in or out. He is a hawk when he's sober, but he what they call a substance abuse problem and he may not notice if you come round in if he's smashed. I would steer clear of him sober or straight.

Doctors told me post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) left me unable to control emotional intrusion into daily life. Emotional intrusion? I laugh at the thought. To me, it seems there is no emotion left in daily life. When I do find it, like a rare gem in the form of seeing a great band or conversation with a soul who can wrench a bit feeling out of me, I feel alive and just like all those salt of the earth cashiers you meet at truck stops or record stores. Those visits are as short-lived as your favorite song and the comedown is worse than that of a two day coke binge.

I am not a radio, nor an open door. Like John said, I am a faulty string of blue Christmas lights. Sometimes I flicker the brightest blue and things are vibrant. You can see me then. Most times I am no more than the dismal darkness of a decorated exterior made terribly obvious by the absence of what could have been beautiful. I am a machine, neither extraordinary nor exceptional. I can function programmed by logic from a healthy upbring, but without sentiment. I can do jobs and play cards. I can force a smile and look human, but I am a faulty machine with missing wires and blown circuits.