Wish I could smell the ocean

Hey. Good to see you. What's up?

Spring break is over. but I don't want to talk much about it. It's time to move on from this past week, I think. I'm going to go to bed at a good time and hopefully sleep well and get up and head off into, well, everyday life.

You okay?

Oh, I'm anxious. But I've done a fairly good job today keeping away from the bitterness and anger and hurt that have been eating away at me. I'm really hoping tomorrow goes well at work.

I miss music. I haven't been playing much, though I have been playing everyday. And today I wrote the first draft of a song, or at least the lyrics.

Great! Do you like it?

I need to get some distance from it, but it is good to be writing, to tap into that place where the writing comes from.

Which is?

Well, in this instance, hurt. I actually haven't thought a great deal about where the writing comes from. Damn, ain't it enough to do the writing? Don't I have my priorities right if I focus first and foremost on the writing?

Yes, you do. But you know that.

Yeah. So I'm glad at least some songwriting has come out of that experience.

So the song is about...

My feelings. Or, rather, my feelings of helplessness and and hopelessness and my need for somebody to fuckin' touch me once in a while. I feel like such an alien creature. I look around at other people and it's like I'm watching from the behind a window saying "I wanna be like the rest of the kids." Don't I get to be a human being too?

Farmboy, where did this come from?

Well, okay, Mr. "I'm-not-a-therapist', this is the thing: I don't know where this came from, just that I've always felt this way. And, believe me, it would be so much easier to blame this on somebody, to say "Yeah, my parents, or the priests, or the teachers...", but it goes deeper than that.

One thing I'm thinking is that I really could use actual honest-to-God therapy --

I agree.

But I can't fuckin' afford the co-payments.

At least, you know, I have you as my friend. I can't tell you how much you've helped these past few days...

Glad to be of service.

I wish it were 20,years earlier, and my Dad was still alive, and I could be with my brothers and my sister and my stepmother and everybody. Man, i wish that more than anything. I wish I could smell the ocean in the air in my hometown. I wish I was better physically, and I wish all my work wasn't for nothing.

(Farmboy starts to cry softly, then stops)

Damn, farmboy. I wish I could help you.

(Farmboy dries his eyes on his shirtsleeve)

Oh, man, you help plenty. I just wish it hadn't come to this...

Farmboy, look...things can change. Things will change.

I hope so. You don't know how much I hope so. 'Cause I seriously love life, I love being alive, and I don't want hope to disappear.

It won't...

(Farmboy starts to cry again)

Farmboy, you'll be okay. You'll be better than you can know. You have to believe this...