Posted 10:33 AM by ill
A very different kind of post...

"Hum, nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. You're looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life..."
General Sternwood - The Big Sleep

I'm angry. Tired and angry and sad and depressed and feeling like the butt of some cruel cosmic joke. Two weeks ago or so I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Sure they say it is treatable and sure I probably will have only a few major flare ups in my lifetime... as long as I change how I live. "Lifestyle change" they call it. Doctor speak for quit fucking around with your health. It's interesting really. How you seem to have this idea of yourself as this invulnerable person. Nothing can stop you and nothing will bring you down. Than whamo! Reality slaps you in the face and brings you down to the real world and the fact that you just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. I use to take comfort in that. Knowing that I meant absolutely nothing and my existence was nothing more than a chance encounter when sperm met egg. I could look at the cosmos and delight in just how incredibly small I am. I truly thought I believed it comforting. I truly thought it made me feel better about the world and what went on. I felt as if I was in on some kind of knowledge that nobody but me and a few folks understood and if everyone else could "get it" the world would be a better place. I'm such a fool. I see my arrogance now. I see the folly of my ways. I wasn't diminishing my existence with these thoughts, I was validating them. Proving to the world that I truly was the "wisest of all" for I got the fact that I knew nothing. It wasn't divine. It was petty and self serving. It allowed me to live my life the way I felt I should because I truly have no belief in consequences of my actions. I could reduce my thoughts and feelings down to the raw black and white facts.

Now though, when you are truly faced with something that drives the point home that you are that small it doesn't seem so freeing. No it seems more upsetting. I am small. Small and unimportant to a world that would no sooner morn my passing than the death of cockroach. I have made no mark. I have left no legacy. I have achieved no greatness. I'm merely just a small man with a narrow focus who will spend his remaining years watching as his body begins to betray him. Piece by piece it will fall away until I am but a shell of my former self. I joke and I kid and try to put on the face that says "it is what it is" but the simple fact of the matter is I'm terrified. Maybe not rational but still how I feel. Watching my father deteriorate from cancer alone and scared didn't help. It all comes back to me and I wonder what he must have thought. I wonder if I think some of the same things he did. I wonder...

Despite my talk I am still that scared little kid crying in the corner. Stupid scared and more self absorbed than ever...