Thursday, May 31, 2012

S456 ARCHIVES: Refractory Redux - Fiction - Creative Writing

originally posted on station456.tumblr.com on April 17th, 2012

**********

I’ve never even laid a finger on a cigarette. Never in my entire life. I’m not judgmental of those who choose to smoke, but, to me, it always seemed like such an awful habit. So yeah. I’ve never smoked before.

I was diagnosed with Lung Cancer the other day; rather bad Lung Cancer. The doctor telling me that there is a very low chance that I will live any more than ten more years of my current thirty years, suffice to say, hurt, as if the mention of the C word wasn’t enough.

I’ve always been an optimist, though. My response to this news was to do whatever it takes to get better, or at least maintain a good enough attitude to stay alive as happily and healthily as possible. Which is why, right now, I’m jogging. Get my mind off of things. And improve my health. Good idea, I think.

But my thoughts on this jog are not quite as optimistic as they usually are: which is to say that they’re really rather the opposite.

I braved through a broken arm that stopped me from playing football for weeks in 8th grade. A little worse, I survived my first girlfriend having to move away in 9th grade, only to have her cease making contact with me when she moved. I narrowly managed to make it through years of working in retail because I can’t find work for my college degree that I worked years of my life obtaining; for reasons that I don’t even want to confront right now for fear of tearing my hair out. Moving beyond that, I was able to live with the death of both of my parents in a lethal car crash when I was 20. This caused my initial mindset to be “I’m a tough cookie, I got this,” but that has harshly shifted to “Damn life and all of its arbitrary unfairness, why should I even care any more.”

I never married, and consequently never started a family. I’m not even 30 and a bit of a successful flirtatious fellow. I’m happy with fun times with the ladies that sacrifices a long-standing-relationship, and usually carry this pleasure out in a soundly unoffensive and respectful manor. So it never really bothered me that “Single” has been my only relationship in my adult life, but it certainly is pestering me now. Nobody wants to party with someone who has lethal cancer, and I’m more or less left without a family member’s should to cry on.

What did I do wrong, I think, directing my thoughts towards whichever celestial being is willing to listen; hopefully a benevolent one. But I know that the answer to that question is no. Life is unfair, harsh and blisteringly cold.

I begin to pick up my pace. I am currently making my way through a small pathway through a small local park where people typically spend a delightful evening buried in a book or throwing around a frisbee – weather-permitting. Today, however, is pouring down rain, and the gray clouds look as if they’re ready to accompany that liquid with some streaks of lightning. This path leads out to a sidewalk that runs alongside a relatively busy road.

I could never kill myself, because I really don’t have it in me. And I don’t say that in a pseudo-macho, yelling-at-my-wimpy-self sort of way, I merely mean to say that I don’t think I’d legitimately be able to command my body to do something that would directly kill myself. My depression isn’t taking me to that frame of mind yet.

But I wonder if I’d be willing to indirectly put myself in a situation that could kill me.

Playing devil’s advocate, I steer myself in the middle of this busy road.

Speaking of the devil, I feel as though I have one on my left shoulder and an angel on my right; like in those old cartoons.

“What are you doing, this is crazy, you can get through this, everything will work itself out, or at least anything is better than this!” he hears from his right shoulder.

“No, no, do this, life is unfair, you want no part in this ridiculous game anymore.”

“Stop! STOP! You’re going to regret this!”

“Regret it!? Regret it when!? When you’re dead!? When you’re finally free from this horrible state-of-being we call life?”

At that moment, a loud thud and the screeching of a car’s tires can be heard before everything fades to solid white.

***

I wake up to the beeping of a machine.

I exclaim “GOD! God can’t even give me death!”

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