Dear Johnny Depp: Stop Acting Like a Toddler ... and Get Off the Drugs

The plot thickens: Johnny Depp is now suing Amber Heard. He's claiming she made the whole thing up. I will admit that I have had a hard time accepting that Johnny Depp could be capable of committing such horrific acts, and I would welcome his vindication. I will also admit that, even as a victim of violent physical abuse, I did have nagging doubts about Heard's accusations. I'm going to walk back my judgement and see how this plays out ... and maybe put on Sweeney Todd to console myself.

Dear Johnny:

When I was in high school, there was this ad on the local Fox station for 21 Jump Street. I'd sit on the couch in our cold basement for hours, wrapped up tight in a blanket, desperately hoping it would air just one more time. And it wasn't so much an ad for the show as it was an ad for you; it didn't show any of the other characters and was mainly upper body shots of you doing various things in slow motion, Simply Red's Holding Back the Years playing in the background.

You were hot. You had it.

And let's be honest: 21 Jump Street was so ... whatever. But how could any 80s teenage girl not fall in love with the sweet, devoted-yet-damaged Edward Scissorhands? What 80s teenage girl didn't wish (more than a little) that she could be Winona Rider (and not just because she was your girlfriend)?

As you got older, you got weirder, and we ate it up. We were totally bummed when you and Winona broke up, but were okay when you moved on to Juliette Lewis. Totally your style.

But we should have seen the Amber Heard thing coming with ... Ellen Barkin and Kate Moss? You found redemption with Vanessa Paradis, even though you chose not to marry her (you were a bad boy, after all).

When Pirates of the Caribbean came out, we loved but didn't entirely understand the whole Kiera Knightly thing ... and were relieved that whatever that chemistry was seemed to be trapped forever on the big screen.

But Kiera would have been a thousand times better than this whole Amber Heard mess.

Seriously, Johnny ... Amber Heard?

It's easy to see why a middle-aged man would hook up with a piece like that. But would the Great and Magnificent Johnny Depp hook up with that? The Johnny Depp? We didn't get it then and we still kinda just don't get it.

You're ... Captain Jack Sparrow. You're Edward Scissorhands, Hunter S. Thompson and Ichabod Crane. And you're my personal favorite, Sweeney Todd.

But suddenly, inexplicably, you were with ... Amber. She is so ... much younger. She is ... a lesbian. And besides her (great) beauty, she is utterly ... ordinary. Far too ordinary, we thought, for the Great and Magnificent Johnny Depp.

It was then, after you confirmed your relationship to the press, that you made the whole world think: Johnny Depp is boring. Johnny Depp is, unfortunately, just like every other middle-aged white guy.

All of a sudden, we realized that you were never rebelling against societal constructs, you just had commitment issues. And - horror of horrors - like most men, you think between your legs.

You weren't ever supposed to be like most men.

You know ... it was something our dads would do. And our dads were a huge disappointment.

I didn't want to believe the news that you beat your wife. My first thought was: That Amber Heard Chick is a gold digger. I thought, What the hell did you expect, Johnny, marrying a nobody half your age with no money?

And then, the police reports started coming out. The reports that you hit her. And then the photos came out, and there was no going back from that. And then the news that it wasn't the first time.

As a survivor of violent physical abuse, those pictures of Amber took me way back. They took me back twenty years, when I had a boyfriend that hit me all the time. But he would never have dared hit me in the face. Never.

There would have been far too many consequences for hitting me in the face, even in a place like Russia, so he just beat the rest of me black. I don't know if you know this, Johnny, but you can hit someone to the point where there is no black and blue, there is only black (with a slight dark purple line around the edge).

I wondered, What did Amber say to you?, that caused you to hit her? I don't even remember what I said to set Sergei off. That was his name: Sergei. I genuinely don't remember what I ever said to ever set Sergei off; I only remember that pretty much anything, no matter how small, always set him off.

And then we got the photo of the mirror.

What kind of monster cuts off a piece of their own finger, then uses it to write something on a mirror? That is so ... Next Level. And outside of, say ... Sweeney Todd, in the theater or on DVD/Blu-Ray ... that is so not something we would expect from the Great and Magnificent Johnny Depp.

To recap: We have the photos of Amber's face all jacked up, and the photo of that genuinely insane thing you did to your bathroom mirror, so maybe you'd just want to move on and quit being a total psycho weirdo and let Amber go and ... ha ha ... do the right thing?

But you're not doing the right thing. In fact, you're way super extra really not doing the right thing, and I'd be lying if I said that your behavior isn't affecting whether I go see your movies. To be honest, it's affecting my ability - yes, my ability - to watch your old movies. My family didn't go see Through the Looking Glass because we - my teenage daughters and I - couldn't get the image of Amber's beat up face out of our heads.

I have my own abusive exes that refuse to take responsibility for the bad things they've done to me and to my family. I don't want to see a famous rich guy who should not have one problem in this world acting like a toddler when it comes to paying for his crimes. And believe me, what you did to Amber was a crime. Only you're rich, so you don't get the same treatment us peons get.

You were supposed to give Amber money to donate to a couple of her causes. Only you didn't do that, because you wanted to act like a baby. Instead of doing what you agreed to do, you gave some of it to those causes - kind of - but instead of letting her do it, you decided - in a youthful act of pointless defiance - to do it yourself. And have made sure to push the gold digger narrative, knowing full well that no one pushed you into a relationship with a girl young enough to be your kid, who is an outspoken lesbian and that you should have left the hell alone, considering that you were essentially a married man when you made the (incredibly) stupid decision to hook up with her in the first place.

AND NOW I'm reading that you want her to pay $100,000 of your legal fees, because she filed a motion. Really, Johnny? Did Amber force you to spend $1 million on an overpriced lawyer? Gotta admit that now, when I see Captain Jack Sparrow, I think ... he would never do that. Edward would never do that. The guy from the Chocolate movie would never do that.

So now, Captain Sparrow's image, Sweeney Todd's image, and most certainly Edward Scissorhand's image isn't just tarnished by you acting like any other pathetic, bitter, gross middle aged drug addict ... no, it's like someone took a dump all over each and every one of them.

And the worst part of this is watching Johnny Depp succumb to what looks, one hundred percent, like a wicked addiction to prescription painkillers. The clammy face. Sunken eyes. Weird, unfocused stare. My ex has that same dumb look and the same sickly pallor when he sucks down 14 oxys in one day.

Also: Lose the eyeliner. It doesn't make you look edgy, it makes you look like an old man desperately hanging on to his youth. Which makes you seem that much more pathetic because of what you're doing to Amber.

So get off the drugs. Then give Amber the money you agreed to give her and let her go. You were wrong, she's not worth it ... so just let her go!

And this is why: When I saw you at the end of Fantastic Beasts, I cringed. Actually, my whole family cringed. This is what we thought: "Oh ... it's ... him." Your continuing to act like a mean toddler who had to be banned from playdates because he cant keep his damn hands to himself is making me uncomfortable, and I don't want to feel that way about you.

I'm sure it's a lot of pressure being you. But you were in a lucky place, because we loved you because you were a weirdo. Fix yourself, so we can get you back.