Chapter 1: Learning How to Die

Sept. 9th, 2018

I’ve had a lot going on in my life recently and I need to write about it so I decided to put it here. My family is stressed enough and don’t need the extra pressure. I need to talk and they don’t need to listen so here I am. My cognitive functions are still degrading and the more they degrade the faster they degrade. I’ve had to accept that I have the early stages of some form of fast acting dementia.

Last night I was talking with my sister and I told her my dreams. I’ve become so focused on my battle that my dreams are simply: In four years time, I want to remember my name and what my children look like so I won’t be afraid of them. I want to see my sister again before I forget she exists. That’s it. I had other dreams a year or three ago, but without my identity none of them matter.

In my former profession it was understood that I could take a pipe or bullet to the head. A quick rather easy death. If you’ve ever taken a hard beating you know after awhile the blows quit hurting and you’re just waiting for them to finish or to die whichever comes first. What I’m facing now is different. It’s a fast but gradual dissolution of my personality. It’s a slower version of what happened to me on The Night of Hell.

I’ve had to accept that things I want to happen aren’t going to happen because I can’t do it. I love writing. Yet even writing this is very tiring to me mentally. I have laid out a trilogy consisting of 25 short stories, some Young Immortal stories, and maybe 10 other stories I want to write. I know now I may get only two or three more short stories written. If I’m lucky I might squeeze out a few more. I’m sorry. It taxes my mind too much most of the time to write fiction.

When I get tired my administrative functions fly out the window. My daughter took me to dinner after I got off work last week. I had to ask her to pick a meal for me from the menu because I literally couldn’t. Even when I’m not tired things that require thought are becoming harder. Yesterday at work, I failed a test four times a 12 year old would have passed the first. I mean that literally. It’s becoming easy to say I don’t know when someone asks me a question when last year I could have taught a seminar on the subject.

I’m fortunate in several regards. The first is I completed my life’s goal a few months before the initial onset of my illness. So I WIN! It doesn’t matter if I die. Thirty-four years of hard back breaking work brought to fruition. My goal? I was raised in a less than desirable environment that made me a severely damaged human being. My goal was to become a good and mature enough person to be able to marry and have children and raise them right. And to hold my first grandchild. It took ten years of hard work including therapy to become that person. None of my children have ever been arrested or had drug or drinking problems or unwanted pregnancies, or gang issues. 1 of the three is working on advanced degrees is married w/ kids, the second is going trade school, the third is in the work force. I’ve held my grand daughter. I am still married to their mother. I WIN.