“There’s no doubt about it, show business lures the people who didn’t get enough love, attention, or approval early in life and have grown up to become bottomless, gaping vessels of terrifying, abject need. Please laugh.” – Dennis Miller

Dear Approval,

Oh how I long for you. Your words are like honey on my tongue. You are a sumptuous banquet for my hungry and needy soul. I can’t get enough. I will go out of my way, forget self-consciousness, and even prostitute myself on the altar of ego, just to hear one syllable of affirmation. Oh how I need you.

But your words are fleeting. Like an cool aperitif on a hot summer afternoon, your satisfaction fades all too quickly. Like a breathtaking sunset, you bring a happy sadness. Your honey is like nectar licked from a razor’s edge, a delicious agony. But still I seek you.

I don’t understand why people don’t understand me. Why can’t they see what I see? Why must I redundantly waste invaluable time and constantly use multiple words to explain my dreams? And when I do so, no one says thank you. No one says I understand. No one says I see.

Why must I carry this unbearable burden of empathy? So that I feel a person’s excruciating hurt as deeply as my very own? And I know their selfishness, and thus my own. It seems a cruel twist of fate, this double curse.

My dreams intimidate. My empathy debilitates.

And so, I’m barren. I’m hungry. I’m…starving…to death.

Do my longings, even this insatiable hunger for approval really come from God?

Do you understand me? Do you feel my pain?

Do you like me? Do you really, really like me?

And tell me, is it only me that feels this way?

Randy