I am usually a positive person, but once in a while my walls crack, and I can't control the hurt leaking out.

I realize that most everyone is on the same boat -- we all look OK, all put-together, laughing and joking and acting that life is all good -- but inside it's a different story.

I took some psychology classes in college -- and one of my favorite classes was counseling psychology. The book they made us read was basically a collection of case studies. I loved it. In the preface, the author talked about gathering a room full of people, and asking them "what do you want?" and prepare to be amazed, flooded, overwhelmed by what comes out. The desperation, the longing, the pain -- and it's not all "I wanna drive a Hummer" or "I wanna make 6-digit income."

A society forces us to make nice, and it has to -- most of us can't deal with someone else's existential crisis on daily basis (bless those whose jobs are to deal with them). We can't function like that. But once you open the can, wow -- it's like opening gates of a dam. You can't close easily, and it's deeper than how it looks when you're looking down from the edge.

I'm better now than I used to be, but when I was younger I continually oscillated between being elated and feeling like I better not be near a knife (for the fear of what I would do with it). No, I don't think I'm bi-polar -- that was just adolescence. And on top of my own problems, I feel like I'm a sponge, as I easily sense and soak up even very well-concealed hurt that people carry inside. Apparently I can smell them, have an antenna in places other people don't. And I feel their pain. Yes, most vividly.

That's why my music ends up being so dark, when on the outside I don't look like a punk rocker with troubled past. I don't have a troubled past -- my parents were awesome, never had serious financial or school problems, always had great friends, now happily married with kids -- yet like everyone else, I'm hiding a big bag of hurt and every once in a while it rips in one corner and it comes out, I can't pretend to be positive or hopeful that day. Tomorrow it's back to normal.

At this point, I consider it one of the reasons I exist -- I feel others' pain and carry it as my own, using that as my fuel and reason to make music. It's a function worthwhile doing (I hope).

But it sure hurts, hurts bad. Living involves hurt, it's necessary. We all ought to pat ourselves on our backs and by golly be nicer to each other. Living is hard enough, by itself.