My birthday just passed on December 1, 2018 and I reached my 50th birthday. A mark in my personal history that I thought I would never reach. Many of you know my story and my history and have known that I have been sick for a very long time. That almost 27 years ago now I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Large Cell Lymphoma that destroyed most of my Large and Small intestines. I have been lucky and have survived through many things throughout the years. But nothing ever prepares you for the future. It is true that with each illness I have gained knowledge and strength, I have been surprised with the ferocity that the illness returns each time. Even now I am being plagued by internal bleeding and not knowing what is actually wrong and causing it. I have spent most of the month of November in and out of the hospital, had to have blood transfusions and a battery of tests that were inconclusive and didn't shed any light on my recent illness and lack of strength.
2018 has been a strange year for me. It moved fairly rapidly and many things happened that have left me with my head spinning and less of an understanding regarding human nature. It is also true that the strong prey on the weak, and people constantly try to take advantage of the ones that they think are weaker or nicer then themselves. I have been constantly embroiled in a battle since 2010 where I have been continually used and abused by people I struggled to help and who I thought I was doing good by. When I ran into difficulties of my own, I found myself struggling alone and there was no one around willing to help me in the same ways that I had helped them. I bounced around and was struggling constantly battling drug abuse, homelessness and hunger. Several times I attempted to change my circumstances and twice things rebounded on me and I ended up on my own and all alone again.
I lost a lot of friends and acquaintances over the past 2 years to drug overdose and complications to HIV/AIDS it hasn't been a comforting thought. I never thought that I would face such loss. Now that 2018 is drawing to a close I am reminded that some of my very best friends are no longer here. Every one of my family members is sick currently, and none of the prognosis's are good. My father is battling in operable stage 4 lung cancer, and my brother is battling end-stage renal disease, my mother is paralyzed from the waist down and has been extremely sick since June. All of us have been going through hospitalizations and multiple doctor visits.
We also lost my dad's youngest brother in November to Lung cancer and the family is still in shock about that. It is unfortunate that as we get older our bodies tend to weaken and our ability to heal slows and we don't recover as fast as we did when we were younger. It is hard to believe that I am 50 years old now, that I have reached middle age and haven't really grasped the essential concepts of how to live and survive on my own. My entire life I have been constantly surrounded by other people and have been a care-giver. I thought that by now I would have at least learned the basics of survival and living on my own. But unfortunately, somehow I missed those life lessons.
Nothing that I have been through has prepared me for the future that is looming in front of me. I am suffering from the loss of many of my friends and a support network. I am in love with someone that I realize doesn't honestly feel the same way for me. I struggle with depression and dependence issues and I also have a desire to change my outlook on life. With the possible loss of my family closing in on the horizon, I am afraid of what I am going to find when I am all alone. I have never learned how to survive on my own and I struggle daily to overcome my own depression and weaknesses. I am afraid that once I loose my parents I will be totally lost and will not know what to do with the rest of my life.
None of my dreams ever included me outliving my friends, peers or my parents. I thought when I was diagnosed with cancer that it was the end for me but I have survived longer then most other people and I have overcome so many obstacles and outlived so many predictions of my demise. I am not sure what I actually thought my life was going to be like, but this is not what I imagined when I left Orlando the first time and followed Joe Royer to Atlanta. I never imagined in a million years that I would suffer from Colon cancer and that I would become disabled at such a young age. I never really faced the truth of it all preferring to loose myself in drug use and addiction. I surrounded myself by like minded individuals and created relationships and sexual partnerships with those that were lost in that world. I have clung to the tapestry of my life and my existence because I really knew no other way. Now I am back in Orlando, back where it all started and some of the same people that I have known from my past are here as well. I am trying to rekindle those lost friendships and relationships trying to rebuild my life and change the course of self-destruction that I have been on.
I don't understand what the future has in store for me but I know that I don't want to continue down the path that I have been going down for so long. I want to change and by doing so I need to change everything about my life and what I have going on around me. I want my partner to be with me, but if he doesn't want me in the same way that I want him then I am afraid that I am just waisting my time all over again and just setting myself up for heartache and pain. I am going to stop writing tonight and continue this more in morning when I have more time to reflect on my life and situation.
Till we meet again in the morning! Well it is actually a few days later I am picking up where I left off. Today is now the 9th of December and I have gained a few more insights into the world that I was writing about the other day and I wanted to finish up on the topic of Nothing Prepares Us for the Future. From the previous written dialogue you can see that I wasn't given a manual in which spelled out the answers to all of life's problems and made it easier to live by. No after Joe and I broke up my life changed dramatically, I couldn't seem to pull myself together in any way that mattered. I have struggled from that moment on till now, I can't explain it. But the lessons I should have picked up along the way I didn't or maybe have forgotten. I pushed myself further into my misery and drug addiction and as I said surrounded myself by like minded individuals. I lost myself and my direction and it has taken me years to come back to the realization that I am a person and that I do matter and that I do count and that I have purpose and meaning. I still haven't made it back to my go out and get what I want personality but I am striving daily to reach it.
I realized not too long ago that when I left Orlando and went to Atlanta I had a go getter mindset. I saw what I wanted and I set about getting it. Years of being with Joe softened me and then illness struck and I lost heart and hope. I gave up literally because I couldn't see a future with me being the broken and lost person that I was. I suffered and still do at times from the illusion that the Gay lifestyle and world couldn't accept me, that I was a broken person and that I had no place in either gay or straight society. I was hurt and lost, I drifted aimlessly for years feeling sorry for myself and I left so many friends and loved ones behind in my self-pity trip. Luckily many of them have stayed on the edges of my life all these years and I hear from them every once in awhile. But here I am now at 50 and I am looking at my life and wondering where to go and how to begin again. As you may be aware I have never figured out how to give up or surrender. I just couldn't figure out how to stop living, waking up in the morning and going on with life.
For many years I dedicated myself to the service of other people, trying to help out where I could and take care of those that needed it. I threw myself into trying to take care of everyone and being there to help others that were in need. In other words I gave myself over to the service of others and I put their needs ahead of my own. In a sense this worked to give me a purpose and I woke up daily to take care of those that I felt were less fortunate than me and who needed my help. By focusing on their needs I was able to put my own to the back of my mind and focus totally on them. This maybe the very reason why I am still with you today. I selflessly dedicated myself to helping and taking care of others. I created a huge extended family and I struggled to take care of each and every person that I cared about. This may seem crazy to you but I believe that by doing this I was able to live a much longer and fuller life than I normally would have. I believe that my dedication to others is what helped me survive all the sickness and illness that plagued me through the years and helped give me the desired will to survive so that I could continue taking care of those that mattered to me.
Food for thought: We are not able to chose our own family but we do have the ability to create and extended family that we can relate to and who is there to support us and nurture us and we offer similar support back in return. Many of you are in my extended family and I am grateful to have each and every one of you in my life.
As I am looking back on the days that have gone by and I be extremely honest with myself we endured a lot and overcame so many hardships that bonded us together in ways that others just couldn't understand. Despite that we are all separated by distance now and have scattered to the 4 winds. Some of us still in Atlanta, others in California, Florida, Texas, Chicago and other places we are still a family and what brought us together is apart of us forever. Our mutual experiences and the challenges that we faced and overcome together have bonded us in ways that make us irreplaceable in each others lives. No one can take the place you hold in my heart ever and no one will ever be able to replace what you mean to me and how you are a part of me. Each of us has left their mark on the other and that has helped shape us into the people that we have become. I know that it might seem like I was complaining earlier about my life and the losses that I suffered and have endured but the truth is I wouldn't change any of it for the world because if I did I wouldn't be the same person that I am today and you wouldn't be in my life making me a better person.
I may not have learned how to take care of myself and learned how to live alone, but I learned something just as equally important. I learned how to take care and appreciate others, I learned how personal sacrifice and dedication of the heart and spirit to the wellbeing of others is helpful to ourselves. If I hadn't I probably wouldn't be here today. Many of you would have to visit my resting place and wouldn't be able to talk to me like you can today. So let me thank you for helping me learn this lesson and for giving me the strength to carry on when all seemed so hopeless around me. Understand and know that you are the life source that has kept me alive and healthy all of these years.
Now that I am looking toward the future and many of us have been scattered to the 4 corners of the earth I am struck by the over powering desire to reconcile all of my differences with everyone, to apologize for the wrongs that I have done and the sins that I may have committed against you. I want to rekindle the relationships the friendships and bridge the hurts, the harsh words and bitter emotions that might be separating us. I want to be your friend again, and be able to count you as mine and for us to be there for one another because lets face it none of us are getting any younger. We are going to need each other and we once supported one another and will probably need to do it again as we move forward.
I was feeling melancholy when I started writing this entry into my blog, but I am feeling better now that I am drawing to a close. My desire above all else is for us to all come together again in person. I still have a dream that has been with me for a long time now. In the future we are all of going to need a place to call home. Many of you might remember us talking about and joking about me starting a retirement home, I used to call it Mommas Home for Wayward Homosexuals. It is my dream to buy a huge mansion one day and bring all of us who know and love each other back together again and have our own place. A place where everyone has a place there are no expectations, no recriminations and everyone can live out the rest of their lives in happiness and friendship, surrounded by love, light and happiness. This is not an impossible dream or goal and might be something that we could all accomplish together. Creating our own compound where we all live and work together to build a stronger and brighter future for ourselves and where each of us is able to live stress and debt free.
Please let's try and make my dream a reality.
As always my hopes and dreams are with you,
Uncle B
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