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| Wasted Time |
- Knife: SpyderCo Laci Szabo collaboration, circa 2015.
- Pen: Pelikan Fountain Pen, circa 2004
- Watch: Hamilton Watch Company, Railroad (Elgin) Certified, circa 1924
- US Passport: Circa 2013 - issued to Robert L. Wanamaker, 1 stamp
- Not Pictured: A life in ruins, production date 1961
The last few weeks have been terribly difficult by any and all measure. The pain has gotten worse; paralysis set in, both legs unable to move, one day this week. Psychologically, I can no longer bear what has become essentially cruel and unusual punishment: I know that my life will continue to worsen episodically, and I pray that (if I pray for anything) within a year, within a month, I won't be alive.
Until that time comes, the worsening episodes of pain will eventually drive me crazy. Any recuperation, any progress, that I fight for so diligently, is erased quickly and easily by the cancer, by the organic damage done by the cancer. I keep sliding backwards down the hill while scrambling frantically to climb upwards.
The past few weeks have shown that. In November, I forced myself to swallow my pride, to hike as best I could. Then came the fatigue, and nearly passing out on the trail, the hallucinations. The hiking stopped. I treated the fatigue with drugs; then came the terrible, terrible pain; barely able to walk. Unable to risk going out into the woods alone, with exceedingly high probability I couldn't walk back.
Any progress I had made, any hope I felt, was replaced with weakened decrepitude and despair. Six weeks of that horrendous pain, of being doubled over where I stood, screaming while wave after wave of pain washed me clean, clean of all hope, clean of all aspirations, clean of any purposeful intensions, clean of any good thoughts.
Clean of any thoughts. No thoughts of women I've been with; of women who I want to breed. No thoughts of financial distress. No thoughts of money at all.
At those times, I exist only as pure pain. Pain, doubled over in my driveway, in my hall, in my office, screaming. Pure, clean, white, virginal pain tearing my body and soul asunder so they can never be one again.
Existing not as man, not as beast - just as pure, sweet, sweet pain.
The pain finally stopped; I was left weak, in worse shape than ever, circling back to when my life was a was little more than a film about exhaustion. Then one day I woke up to my legs not moving. Not moving at all, it took me several tries, feeling more and more like a bleached, bloated whale carcass tossed onto a soft sand trap to die in the sun. Finally sitting up, I could make it as far as the bathroom, to stand, my body wavering and threatening to fall as I held my dick and pleaded with nobody to let me piss and not break open my head on the toilet when I did fall. I could not make it to the kitchen to get water, which was needed so terribly.
My legs: fat, unmoving, ugly, useless appendages dragging on the floor. My body: fat, unmoving, ugly, useless dead weight serving no good purpose.
The only hope, the only escape from this pain, this entropy, that is left me is death.
A thunderstorm, with heavy winds, rain, and hail, rocks the valley. A thunderstorm, in late February, with rain, hail, and high winds whipping the house, the trees, everything into docile submission.
Rain and hail. The wind, blowing through my body and leaving my soul behind in wreckage.
May god have mercy upon me.
