You are dead asleep, safely tucked away in your bed, alone as usual, but the reason for that is not the reason(s) that I am here, and are a different story entirely. Alone, or accompanied by some random hussy you've convinced to share your bed, neither matters to me. I am here for you. You toss and turn, mutter some nonsense under your breath as I take over your subconscious, but that is normal it happens to everyone. I try to take control gently, most of the time, but now and then, you lot either resist me, or are assholes that I care less about being gentle with when I take control. You are a bit of an asshole, but your resistance is not particularly strong tonight, and I gently force it to crumble in front of only a modicum of my power. After all, you admire me, I am a hero to you, why ruin the love fest by running over you like a Panzer division? At least not unless you force me to, then well, then, you take your chances just like the rest of them.
As I mentioned I am your hero, a title you bestowed upon me and 365 other people throughout time and space. Some of are 'real' people, some of us are fictional characters, some of us are animals, and at least one of us is a number. You picked fairly decent range of heroes from all sorts of places and all sorts of times, and given your relative limited imagination, I am slightly impressed. Not that it matters, I can assume the guise of any of those 366 people or things that you put on your hero pedestal(s). Though I choose not to pick the number or the horse, because that would make communication a little more difficult. Not that I have to speak aloud or your language to communicate with you, after all I am mucking about in your mind. You don't get to talk, and I don't really need to speak aloud to make myself understood. But, I figure a talking horse, or number would make this take over just a little too weird for you to take seriously.
And it is time you took something seriously, even if it is a visitation in the middle of the night from a hero of yours that may or may not really exist. But to you, and for as long as I want to (tonight at least) I exist. Therefore, I am going to make myself at home in this train wreck you call a mind, and dispense with a few home truths that you need to, but don't want to hear. They are nothing you don't really already know. After all, you are, for your age group and time period, a fairly clever fellow when you apply yourself. Obviously, the problem is you rarely apply yourself, and a couple of people left some serious self-doubt in your mind for you to carry around with you as you wander through your day to day existence. That makes it difficult for you, but no more difficult than it is for a lot of other of your kind. At least you have the sense to realize the self-doubt isn't true, but not quite enough sense to dispel it, and be the clever fellow the world sometimes needs you to be. Which is, in many ways, a true pity, but something that need not detain us at this time.
The main home truth that I've been elected by our various guises to impart to you is pretty simple. We aren't heroes, either yours or anyone else's. Most of us don't give two shits for our place in history, and we don't care that you think we are worthy of, or even need, your idolatry. You've never met any of us, and we agree with your statement that one shouldn't meet your heroes. There is very little chance that you and any of us would get along. Most of us would find you an annoying little shit, and you would probably be appalled at some of our lesser publicized life decisions. But, fuck you, we didn't ask your opinion, and if we did, we would give it to you in terms which even you could understand. These ivory tower like pedestals that you've constructed for us, aren't suited for the vast majority of us. Certainly a couple of us were very close to being saints, but we are your heroes, and you are not the saint worshipping type.
In order to qualify for the dubious distinction of being one of your heroes, you judged us. Mostly for the good, but we didn't ask for your judgment. In fact, most of us could care less about you, or what you think. We are (almost) all dead, or fictional, and are past caring what someone, anyone, you think. You look up to us like some star struck teenage girl going ape shit over the Beatles (which we notice are absent from your list, a fact that pleases most of us), and we are not amused. Granted we are a talented lot, we went down in history for (mostly good) reason, and we understand how people could fall into the trap of admiring us overmuch. However, like the song says, we are mostly ordinary, there are a few of us that would dispute that, but in the main, we are ordinary. Not so much greater than you could be, if you tried. Which of course you seem to be incapable of doing.
You use the hero worship of us to attempt to explain away your own failings. And you have failings, lots of them, a string of failures that would make a particularly clumsy inventor proud. However your multitude of failures is, and this is the point you miss so very badly, not anymore lengthy than the average person in your world. You at least like to think that you stand out at something, even if that something is failing. Certainly you do a fine job of failing, and you seem remarkably prone to making the same mistake(s) over and over again, but none of your failures are particularly remarkable in their scope. This is a lesson, or an idea that you need to wrap your fragile, eggshell mind around, and move on with your life. Being defined by your failures isn't noble, it won't win you any friends, and won't make you cool.
Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of this blog, granted it is mostly dross, and needs an editor in the worst possible way, but it is still something of an accomplishment. Not many of the people in your life would ever think you were capable of such dedication. This is as close to praise as you are going to get from us. Maybe it will help, maybe it won't, we don't particularly care. What we care about is ourselves. We care that by making us your heroes, by hiding behind our achievements, and accomplishments, you are stunting (we think on purpose) your own growth. You aren't getting any younger lad, and at some point you are going to have to come out from behind our skirts, and become your own man. We would like for this to happen sooner rather than later. We wouldn't have bothered hijacking your mind if we didn't think that maybe you may be made of sterner stuff than you think.
We are well are aware of the mess you've gotten yourself into at present. It is a fine mess, and you did a fantastic job of dropping yourself into it. You have (we know) scoured our collective pasts looking for one of us that had been in the same situation as you are now, in the vain hope that we would provide you guidance. Quite a few of have been in very similar situations as you are now, but you just haven't figured out which ones. Your current situation, while not as bad as you think, is a bit dodgy, and it is yours and yours alone. You are the one that needs to sort it out, and relying on one or more of us isn't going to help. We are (for the most part) of a different time, a different set of social mores guided or constrained us, and we each reacted in matter most suited to our personality. You didn't need our lines to get into this situation (or at least not many of them, we suspect you poached a few, we do mainly approve), and we don't believe that any of our lines can help you get out of it. If that is want you want to do, and we suspect you don't.
Quite simply, we are going to pay you back your blind faith and worship of us with a little bit of the same for you. As a group (though the vote was close between the "he will be fine" camp and the "he will fuck this up in an explosive manner" camp) we think you can do this. We have decided that you need to be your own hero, and take your current situation as a defining moment in your life. Something that people might actually remember YOU for doing, for better or worse. We have determined to have a little faith in you, after all, you did have enough sense to pick each and every one of us as heroes, and while that annoys us to some degree, it is still a bit flattering. We are not immune to flattery, but don't get carried away. We are not gods (or at least most of us, some of us are almost convinced they are), and we are almost all dead. That doesn't really matter as the few living ones wouldn't deign to speak to you anyway.
Dawn is about to break, and that alarm clock sitting on your bedside table is about to jolt you awake, and send you off to whatever tasks the world has set before you. However, the world can wait, our task is more important, our task which is now your task is to be your own hero. There are, much to your and our shock, a few people who actually think you can do it. One or two of them have enough sense that you should believe them. We think you can, and since we are your heroes, you should listen to us. If only for the fact that if you don't we will be back in your dreams, and our return visits will be less than pleasant. Bon chance.
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