Okay, fine. You want to tell me the truth.

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You want to tell me that it is okay.  I may, from what you have heard, read, and seen, not even be a has been.  From what you have researched, I'm a never-was.  Okay.  And then you want to tell me that my notions of who I was, or even am, is a complete fraud.  Okay.  You want to tell me I probably haven't turned the corner, healthwise, that I am just deluding myself.  Okay.  You feel the need to tell me that I am not attractive to women, those reactions I am sensing are sympathy, not attraction.   Okay.  You want to tell me that my visions and such are, well, beyond delusional.  That is fine.  Spit it out.  Say it.  SAY IT!  Now, that didn't hurt, did it?

You live in the secular and real world.  You may or may not have faith, but it doesn't matter because you know the truth.  You see, hear, smell, taste, and touch with your digits, mind, eyes, flesh, nose, and mind, consciously, aware, true.  You can tell, having met me, or not, that I am at best not well.  You don't understand it fully, whether young or inexperienced in some things or whatever your inability is to track such things, but you know I am... ill.  You know it.  Whether it is a real, if you have met me, or psychic sense if you have not, you smell death on me, in me, through me.  Just a hint of that stench from time to time.  But it can be overpowering at other times.  Perhaps you want to understand, a bit, to get let off the hook.  To feel better about things.  Even if it hurts a little bit to know.

I'm going to give you that allowance.  Just understand it... is never what you thought it would be.  Sometimes, perhaps, it is better to have a ripping flesh sensation in your mind or emotions at times than to be released.  As a fish finds out when the hook is removed, only to be eviscerated, then cooked, or even eaten alive.  Life isn't easy, children.  Life just is what it is and you survive it or not.

The next time you visit a hospital, nursing home, or the like, ask if they have someone who is dying, but slowly.  See if there is someone there who is beyond convalescence, someone in palliative care and near the end or at a difficult moment of that.  Visit them.  The person might see you, through the confusion or pain or whatever might be happening, as a family member.  Or they might just want someone there, especially if they are alone in the freezing night of their dawning death, anyone.  They might tell you things, see things you cannot, they might be angry with you, or have any number of emotional feelings about strange things.  They might insist you give them a hand, help get them up, sure that if they could just get up they would be fine.  Through time they will go through these various stages.  Almost anything could happen.  No matter, some of them just live on and on, well past what the doctors expect.  How do I know?  I have been dying for decades.  I have received no treatment for it until very late in the game, just having people tell me to get up most of that time, blaming me for my condition, or worse, trying to impose harsh reality on me and it, a false reality as it turns out.

Am I delusional?  Most certainly, at times.  Do I see things you do not?  Of course.  Now you know why.  But before you harsh on my mellow again, you should... understand some things.

I have outlived my diagnosis, by at the very least two decades.  And while I tell you this, but my records only show that, you should know by now that you have not and never will be told the truth of all things.  Whether delusional or not, I believed in the early years, after I became dysfunctional for them, that "they" would kill me.  And I do believe "they" contemplated it.  At this point, assuming there is a "them", I think they have... mostly... let things go.  What has been said or written is completely deniable.  I don't really exist, if I ever did, now, regarding some things.  What is done is done, I am alone from them, there is no connection, no link, and I, while not dead, am still dying.  If I do believe they still watch, more out of morbid curiosity?  Do they, once they create a Frankenstein, or find and develop one, watch it until death?  I tell you, they even tend to me, oddly.  I simply don't know.  Of course, you know the dying to be dreadfully delusional. The next time you see me, ask yourself if you believe I am still, or ever could have been, a viable fighter, or warrior, though.  Just... humor me.

As to my notions about women?  You might be correct.  Perhaps I never have had a harem of past loves.  Perhaps the sense I get from women is the same sense a very old, becoming child-like in his mind, man might get from a young woman there to bring the nursing care residents a treat on Christmas or Valentines or such.  I may just be confused, as my body and mind have slowly shut down, and I create fantasies about these things.  Unable to act and barely alive, my notions are seen as sweet, cute, but ultimately feeble and non-threatening.  Something to be chuckled at, or even encouraged just a little bit, to offer the hope such as Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny do.  No harm done, it is believed, and mostly rightly.  I cannot tell you if what you believe here is true or not.  It is beyond the ken of the delusional to know some things.  So... continue to patronize me.

I am not even sure if my health is, or even can be returned.  Oh, sure, there has been a six percent improvement, after what... two or was it three various attempts at taking medication.  How much is a six percent improvement?  How much could it be, given that I am still a candidate (technically speaking) for a heart transplant?  That is the best a year or two of treatment can do?  And, one period of improvement, regardless if stats have fallen in line, does not guarantee or even imply another.

So, yes.  I have eyes, a mind, a foot in the mundane, secular, normal, medical understanding.  I am quite aware.  If you are correct, however, you know that there are times when I can see and times when I cannot see, and times where I see or think I can see far beyond.  Think about it.  Deserving to be in palliative care for the last 25 years, with an undiagnosed death sentence hanging around my neck, dealing with the physical, emotional, and mental effects of such a thing, and you are worried about my sanity?  Really?

Life is hard for me.  I write about it sometimes.  I nag about this, decry that.  But often I just do what I can.  Just working with my sleep patterns has been brutal.  Trying to get a dying body to do anything is, probably beyond your understanding.  Perhaps I exaggerate, though too, as in the following clip?   People in my condition do not pick up and move 1,500 miles, and their whole household.  People such as me do not then buy and take over a homestead, even as weakly as I have done so.  And people like me do not exercise.  We, simply put, can't.  So, before you relegate me to your delusional files, understand, your disbelief means little.  Look to what you see, look to the fruits.  That I am all but dead means my fruits will have some taint of death as well.  But there is life, bits of it, here and there.  And understand, that unlike the Comedian, even Death Incarnate doesn't seem to want me, or at least be able to take me, no matter how hard it has come for me.  So I struggle on, even after the punishment I have and continue to receive.

This has been my last three weeks.  And it comes and goes even in my good times.  More, this is my fucking breakfast almost every day.  I just can't quit or seem to lose, even when I have thrown in the towel.  Note to self: get a smiley face pin.  No, no, I don't need a hand.  It looks like I've gotten up, again, on my own.  Fuck if it doesn't hurt though.  Never mind, I have things to do.  And it IS a gas.

If, too, I fully understand everything you are suggesting.  Perhaps some people are so close to death and have been for so long that we are completely out of it.  Haven't I shown, if what you believe is all true though, that my delusions have legs?  Believe what you will.  Just, don't test it.  Only testing God could lead to even a worse outcome.  Testing me would merely be a mortal mistake.  Humor me... of course.