As I may have noted here before, given my health conditions, I have been told by a series of doctors (I have had 16 GPs since 1988 and have met numerous specialists too) that I have a life expectancy of 51-57 years old, which means 4-10 years remaining. I have become conscious of my departure in the next few years as my health has deteriorated. I feel like a man probably thirty years older than my actual age. My digestion is all over the place and it is often difficult for me to swallow. My limbs are stiff and my eyes have trouble refocusing after I have been reading or in a dark room. I also feel incredibly lethargic and when returning from work, which is very sedentary have no urge except to slump watching television and to sleep. I often sleep for a couple of hours and then return later. Feeling bloated much of the time means I have little appetite. However, I have not lost weight, indeed my belly looks rounder than ever before, causing real problems with my trousers.
Perhaps I have been reaching this state for a number of years now but the bullying and the almost incessant problems with cars, holidays and accommodation have been a distraction. Now things are reasonably settled, largely because I have given up on holidays and rent only a room in a shared house; car problems still persist, I am aware of how far I have deteriorated. Of course, I have no idea when I will fall dead. Ten years can seem a great deal, it will work out to be about an eleventh of my life. I have a feeling I will make it to 57. I have had more than one dream and other premonitions that I will live until late in 2024 and then will die in a car fire in Spain, during daylight. Quite precise. I have had quite a few premonitions in my life that have proven to be true. Often I have ignored them, for example in the case of two of the jobs I was bullied in, much to my personal cost.
How do people react to a recognition of mortality? I heard an interview last week with blues musician Wilko Johnson who was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and was given 10 months to live. His tumour in and around his stomach grew to be 3 Kg (6.6lbs) before it was removed, along with his pancreas, spleen and parts of his stomach and intestines. He had done a farewell tour and album, but then last year was cured. He has been left at a loose end now he has recovered. However, what he had done in response to death was to rush around and do things. Maybe I am not close enough to it yet to feel that urge.
I have been working on a number of partially completed novels that I have written over the past twenty years and have enjoyed returning to them. I am a better writer than when I began some of them, but I have liked going back to the characters and finishing off their stories. However, I realised, now that I am working on a full-length Braucher novel, that I simply do not care. I do not mind if I finish it or not or whether it gets out into the public domain or remains locked up behind passwords on my laptop's C drive. Many people facing imminent death have a 'bucket list' of things to achieve before they go. However, reflecting on this, I could think of absolutely nowhere that I wanted to go or any activity I wanted to do. I have no desire to see the Grand Canyon or swim with dolphins. There certainly is no point in me learning anything new. I know I will gain no new skills before I die and there is no point in all these adverts for language learning that I receive. Given my digestion problems I have no desire to eat any particular foods.
I have booked to return to the hotel in Sables d'Or in France: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/memories-of-sables-dor.html that I visited when I was five and apparently before that in my mother's womb. However, that was simply because have had so many disastrous holidays I could think of nowhere else to go. If I do not make it, I will not be fussed. It is almost due South of where I am living at present and it seems that I can reach it without much difficulty. I do not really need a holiday but am conscious of the censure from colleagues for not going away especially from those who insist on putting themselves into dangerous situations around the globe. Why do amateurs keep on insisting on climbing Mount Everest? However, having had only two weeks of successful holidays since 2005, that have not ended prematurely and costing me hundreds of pounds, I am not optimistic that even this simple holiday will work. Yet, they do not fail sufficiently. I have not been at risk of my life at all. I would be more than happy to give up my place in the lifeboat for someone else who wants life, when the catamaran goes down off the Channel Islands. I have found myself incompetent: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-challenges-of-suicide.html and too cowardly: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/trouble-after-suicide-fails-is-that-you.html to succeed at suicide, so it has to be something from outside that ends my life and I would be grateful if it got a move on. I would like a heroic death, but given my luck it is bound to be humiliating, but I trust I will be on my way by then so will no longer care.
That is the one great thing about knowing you have a reasonably limited amount of time left - you no longer need to care. Once I have gone, I will have no control over what moronic things people might say about my book. Amazon actually bans the posthumous sale of books if you self-publish, presumably that is limited to ordinary people, not literary greats. I have already stopped worrying about my career. It was destroyed by the bullying of two managers who because of personal prejudices decided it was the appropriate thing to wreck my life. I kept hoping that I could get back to the level that I had in 2009 if not beyond that and now am aware that unless this job goes bad too, this will be my last entry on my CV. I do not have to worry about my pension as I will not be alive to collect it. Even if I live ten more years, I will have left well before retirement.
I do care about what will happen to the UK, but these days it is the way I might care about the plastic bag island in the Pacific Ocean, I mourn it, but know I can do absolutely nothing about it. I am throwing myself right into the current election as this may be my last or at most, the penultimate one I will witness. However, with so much, a weariness comes over me. I am just tired of how appallingly so many people are behaving and the energy they put into telling you how essential their nastiness is. I am tired of how badly so many people drive. I am tired at how every company tries to rip you off and insists that their various ways of screwing money out of you is customer service in your interest. It tires me that they feel obliged to lie as if we are morons.
In many ways as the burden of life begins to lift but on the other hand I become ever more tired, perhaps I am becoming like the bulk of the population, walking along oblivious to everyone around me, not interested if I put myself or them in danger as I lap up the 'vital' rubbish coming through the phone. In my case it is coming through my head rather than my phone, but maybe society has finally made me conform. Perhaps if this does drag on for four years let alone ten, I will become tired of waiting. I can certainly tell you now that if I died before I finished this posting, I would be more than happy to be relieved of having to live this tedious existence a moment longer.
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