I have learned to embrace the fact that I am aging. In a population where apparently 1/3 of Americans will have some sort of cancer in their lifetime, I consider myself lucky.
I am approaching 40. I am healthy.
But I'm noticing that quite a few people that I have encountered in my life that thought that "grimey" was the way to be are now humbled by their own flesh but not as much as they were driven by it.
Now that they are physically incapable of bullying and taking advantage of others, they want to preach about what matters in life and perseverance.
I wonder if they ever think about the people they put through hell on their journey to cancer town.
Do they wonder what realizations their victims had to come to in order to persevere?
Cancer truly does not discriminate. It attacks the kind, the unfortunate, the brave, and the cowardly.
I do, as most people, discriminate when it comes to whom I express empathy for.
I do not feel sorry for people who judge (to the point of affecting another's life), abuse, take advantage of and continuously gaslight others just because they got sick.
Now you will know what it feels like to be helpless. You will feel pain that you didn't ask for.
I lived with a man once who treated me like shit. He made me pay for a room in an abandoned house. When the door broke, he took it off the hinges and never replaced it. My mother had just passed less than a year before. I was not in a good head space at all.
And he knew that. I also had reason to believe that he had cameras in the house and released the footage to people in the neighborhood.
I worked a job 3 towns away. I had to walk to the train in the snow at 6am everyday just to get there. He had a car in fact, he had 2 cars. He never once offered me a ride.
I had to take a cab to do my laundry down the street. When I would clean the kitchen, he would come in there and fuck it up right after.
A real piece of work, this one.
I finally got away from him and moved into decent housing. Years passed.
I decided to look him up on Facebook to see where his creepy ass was lurking.
A picture of a man looking considerably older, fatter and in a wheel chair came up.
I was like "Damn, is that him?"
Sure was. I didn't know at the time that he had cancer. I did notice that his right leg was amputated.
I didn't contact him. I left him alone until I had a vivid dream about him.
So I called him on Facebook to make sure he was still alive.
*Side note: I frequently have communicative and prophetic dreams*
Anyway when I called him he apologized, repeatedly. I told him I forgave him but he continued to apologize.
Finally I was like: "[redacted] , why do you keep apologizing? Did you do something I don't know about?"
He responded with silence.
I still forgive him but my empathy stays in my heart.
Whatever else he did that I don't know about, let it rest in peace with his right leg.
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