I wish I was one of those people with mental health issues who could have horrible, messy sex with everyone. The kind of person who has exciting, passionate relationships that almost always end with a mutual restraining order. I wish I had close friends who I crashed with and went to Milan with and got into regular fistfights with. I wish I had the money to repeatedly break my hand punching everything in reach, and the painkillers to make recovery fun. I wish I could do drugs and alcohol yet still be endlessly creative, to the point where I'm instantly forgiven for all transgressions by virtue of being an entertaining man to watch immolate himself. I wish my damage was sexy and infectious. I wish healing was something I did in my fifties at a ritzy rehab center, and that it ended with me doing yoga with a hot wife maybe a little over half my age. I wish my life became more interesting and exciting in direct proportion to how thoroughly I cling to my untreated mental damage. I wish people loved me in direct proportion to how little I can stand myself, or being by myself.

But I'm not that person. People like that don't need to learn to be happy with having less than what they want. With being less than who they want to be. They don't need to compromise, or to stop seeing in black and white long enough to at least tolerate the shades of gray. That's a celebrity. I'm just a person.