I am a man who knows nothing of the simple parts of life. I have worked hard and lived hard. I was not raised in a loving, caring, supportive family. I was not abused or neglected, just completely ignored. There was no warm welcome after school or questions of my likes and dislikes. There were never family dinners or Christmas’s. There was never even a tree to put presents under, if we would have been given any. My parent’s philosophy was children are to be seen and not heard; to raise a child if to provide clothing, a roof over their head, and food. The child can find the rest or live without it, those are luxuries. I completed high school and went to work at a factory. I left my house at 18 and never looked back. I could not tell you if my parents or siblings neither are alive or dead, nor do I think much about it. I never married and no children, as I believed I have never had anything to offer them. Love, compassion, hugs, kisses are not a normal reaction for me, so to try and provide it was not something I knew I could do. So, instead of placing my life upon another, I refused. This was just the life I was given and I have learned to make the best out of it.There are times as I sit on my porch, watching families walk down my street that I wonder if you can exit this life and move to a new one? Religions speak of reincarnation and how you can keep living lives over and over until you live a pure life. What exactly is that? Would that be me living with loving, warm parents? Learning how to care and cherish and give a good life to another. Learning to love and be loved. Moving on into life and finding my life that I was meant to live, my dreams? I wonder, if I die by my hand or another, could I come back and keep living life over and over until I get my dream life? This thought sometimes over takes me.I could be standing on a street corner and I see the bus coming down the block and I think, step out and let it take you. This life, these thoughts, this misery would be over. I could start again and know what I know now and redo life. I go to my local bar every Friday and have four beers and listen to the other men talk of their lives. They have wives, children, and women on the side, friends, favorite sports teams, good jobs, and love. I think stand up and start a fight and in the middle just stop and let them kick, stomp, and punch me till I die. You may be allowed to switch your life for theirs, become what you see in them. I stop just before, the fear of not starting over in a different life, being punished to live my life over and over, due to the taking of my own life. I now wait for life to take me by disease, car accident, and work accident. Day after day I wait and nothing. Nothing happens and I am here waiting and in complete misery.Is this what life is suppose to be? Is this why the miracle of birth is supposed to provide? What is the meaning? What is the lesson that we are to learn? I have tried in my early 20’s to move past the life I was given and try to love and be in the normal world. It ended very badly. I could not communicate; I could not caress or show emotion. I wanted the lady I was with and I wanted a future with her; but I could not be what she wanted me to be and she could not understand my feelings. It ended with her in tears, begging me to move past it and me showing nothing and her leaving. I felt nothing with her tears or begging, I just wanted her to stop and realized that life is not this, it’s just nothing.
Today is my 34th year in this life and I had my annual physical and my doctor again said I look in perfect health. To that I know that I will endure yet another year in this life, to no change or relief. The quilt of praying for my end is difficult to bear and my doctor suggested psychology therapy to help me work through these feelings. Therapy did not work the last time I approached it, it will most likely not work this time. All that I feel will work and end these thoughts is death.
Five years have passed and I have been granted my wish. Cancer has invaded my body and has begun to kill me. The doctor has recommended treatments and said it will give me more time, but not a cure. More time is not my goal of this life and to that no therapies will be sought. The doctor has assured me it will be quick and quite painful, why wouldn’t it be? The thoughts were painful, the lack of love, warmth, and being able to love, were painful. Watching others, less deserving, have the life I dreamed of was painful. Why wouldn’t my death be painful as well?The end is here and I have entered what my doctor has called the final phase. The months leading me here were of the worst pain and have realized more about this life, in this short time, than I ever imagined. I am in a home and being looked after by strangers. I have reached out, in a desperate attempt to reach my siblings, to be rejected. I felt I could convey what I have learned and in hopes to spare them. The never responded to my requests and with that I know they more than likely feel the same as I do. As I entered a hospice and know I will die alone with strangers outside my door; there will be no tears, no funeral, no family to miss or care, I realized that the life I was given was the beginning. It was not my end.I should have kept going, fighting, learning, not observing, not condemning. I should have made myself love, to learn to love back, to show the emotions others desired, to learn to feel and be comfortable with receiving it all. If I would have fought to live as hard as I did to die I would be alive. Life would have been pleasant and good, instead of dead and miserable. I did not need to concentrate on dying or praying for my death, I was already dead. The lesson I hope to leave behind, with the one nurse who listens to my rambling. A nurse I do not know her name, but she is young and I hope she takes it to heart. Is to move on, forget the bad and run, scrape, fight, bite to get the good. Fight like hell and run as fast as you can to it. It is your survival, your legacy, your love.
