Disclaimer: This story contains violence and drug use with minimum sex that isn't even really described very well. I debated even posting this story as it might completely destroy any credibility I have as an author. However, I was persuaded that some people were eager to read a new thing from me, even if it wasn't that good or didn't make any logical sense at all so here you go. If you like it, I'm happy. If not, well I tried. I did enjoy writing it.
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It was funny but I didn't exactly feel worried when the doctors told me that I was going to die. My main feeling at the time was that all of the things I'd have to do to be a responsible adult were now going to pass me by. I was terminal and I likely wouldn't make it to high school graduation. Of course me being fine and accepting my fate did not mean others would allow me to give up so easily. The doctors explained to my parents that there was no hope but my mom insisted on signing me up for treatments and experiments and she told me to fight, fight, fight. Right, just how I want to spend my last few months on Earth, fighting.
My dad was a bit more practical and he eased up on a lot of things. If I wanted to stay out late he didn't mind. If I wanted to drink one of his beers, my dad shrugged his shoulders, showed me how to open it the right way and then got one for himself. That kind of treatment from my dad drove my sisters up the wall. More than once I would hear my father reprimand Lisa and Sally about the fact that they all had to be nice to me since I would be gone any day.
My father kept a brave face on and tried to get everyone to do the same but my mom was not going to just let me die. She agonized over it. She'd sometimes spend the whole day in her bedroom weeping over my impending demise.
Yep, I was going to die before I was even old enough to take a girl out on a date or legally buy porn. That knowledge had become part of my identity. I was signed up for that wish granting thing but they didn't really offer the one big wish I had, which was to have sex at least once before I passed. Instead, I had to be satisfied going on a date with the hollywood actress I thought looked the hottest. The foundation said they'd get in touch with her and see what she said since she wasn't signed up with them already.
Well, I didn't get my date with the actress and I didn't get to have sex with anyone but I did end up getting something that I didn't even know that I wanted but turned out to be the best thing of all. Well, not at first but eventually.
I had been getting worse and worse so I wasn't even going to school when my junior year started. I had trouble even just getting out of bed so I couldn't exactly put my foot down with my mom to stop all treatments but I had stopped cooperating. I really didn't see the point in dragging it out. I was going to die so death could just come take me already. I was tired of being a burden to my family. I was tired of making my mom cry everyday. I was just too damn tired of living. Hurry it the hell up or I'll do it myself, assuming I could lift my arm.
I couldn't be brought to the hospital so my mom brought her phone to show me the doctor's face on video chat. He was saying there was a cure. You'll forgive me if I wasn't excited. I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating. Yeah, you can take that word and just throw it away cause it didn't have any meaning for me. In my mind, I was already dead so why couldn't everyone just leave me in peace.
I don't remember signing the consent for any of this. I just remember going back to sleep at home in my room and waking up in the hospital. The doctors had figured out how to trick my own immune system to attack the cancer. I wasn't completely out of the woods but the initial tests were very encouraging. From my point of view, all I knew was my vision was getting better. I was eating more. I was thinking more. I was talking more. My arms started to feel like they actually had something to them. My legs were getting stronger day by day. My lungs were no longer shallow and I could take a deep breath.
The damage the cancer had done to me wasn't all fixed in a day. I spent a long time in physical rehabilitation and healing up. It was already past when I should have finished my senior year and graduated before I was well enough to go home and not carry a tank of oxygen around with me.
So everything was great from then on you might think. Wrong. Big wrong. It was like my life was flipped on it's head. When I used to sort of not get along with my mom, now she was just so happy to have me alive I could do no wrong in her eyes. My dad used to be the one person in my family who I thought understood me and now we couldn't be farther apart. What was I going to do with my life, he'd ask me. I didn't know. I hadn't planned on living. Leave me alone. "Why don't you try to get a GED, go to college, get a job, do anything other than just stay in your room." Why was he pushing me so much? I didn't feel like getting a GED. I didn't feel like going to college. I didn't feel like doing any of that crap.
"You're 19 years old. You better start feeling like it." he berated me.
"Why do I have to do that right now?"
"You're an adult. You're not sick anymore. Stop living your life like you are. Wake up. That's reality knocking on your door. Ok. Everyone in this family made sacrifices for you."
"I never asked for ..."
"QUIET! Sit your little ass down. You think I work three jobs, put the house up for a mortgage I can never pay back, sink this family into a mountain of debt so that you can sit in your room and play video games? Huh?"
"You want me to answer or be quiet?"
"Oh! You want to be a smart mouth."
"John, stop." my mother would cut in. "Stop it. He's still healing."
"Yeah, I get that, from 'I'm too fucking lazy to do a damn thing' - itis."
Look, I tried to do like my dad liked but I was not going to pass that test. I missed all of high school. And who was going to hire me to do anything? But I did try. I started to go to a study center to prepare for the GED. I was in class with a bunch of degenerates so you can imagine the pace of learning was rather slow. But even with that and me doing some volunteer work just so I could say I was doing something, things were getting worse. My dad was pushing and pushing all the time. I felt like I was in the military or something. I mean, I get it. He was trying to make up time and be a dad and raise his son the proper way instead of being the dad who let me drink underage. I could also see the stress of his money problems on his face. I often thought about the fact that it might have been better if I had just died.
I tried to focus on doing what I was supposed to do but something I had never really had to deal with before was starting to occupy all of my thoughts. Sex. Sex. Sex. I wanted sex. I needed sex. I couldn't concentrate on school because all I could think about was fucking the teacher, or my class mate, or the skeleton in biology class. If I rode the bus home I found myself checking out every woman on the thing, even the older ones. This sucked. It was like I was walking around with a hard on all the time. My mind was always thinking about sex and it pushed everything else out. The more I thought about sex the more I wanted it. The more I wanted it, the more it pissed me off that I wasn't getting it. The more I was pissed off all the time the more my relationship with my dad would turn into just us shouting at each other.
...
Day 0
That snowball continued for a while and my dad put up with me as crazy as I was in those days. But then the snowball got too big and my dad laid down the law. He was going to kick me out. No lie. He was at the end of his rope with me and even if I was his son and even if I was a cancer survivor, he was going to throw me out unless I shaped up. He was not going to tolerate any more of my laziness, any more of me talking back, any more of me not starting my real adult life.
And guess what, I was so pissed off and hard up that I actually started packing my bags as if I had anywhere to go. I actually yelled at my dad as he drove away to go work the midnight shift at his fourth job that I'd be gone by the time he got back.
Yank. My mother ripped the suitcase out of my hand and slapped me across the face. My sisters were spying from around the corner of the hall but my mother scowled at them and they scurried off. Me, I didn't care. I turned my back to her as she started tearfully trying to get me to see reason. She was saying something but I wasn't listening.
"You're going to have to get over your demons cause I really think he's serious."
"Go away."
"No. You're not going anywhere. We did not ..."
"I never asked you to do anything. I never asked you to cure me. I never asked to live. I never asked you to mortgage the house. I never asked for any of it. I was ready to die. You should have just let me die."
"Don't talk like that. Of course we wouldn't let you die."
"Then get off my back about it."
"No one is on your back. No ..."
"Bullshit, mom. Do this. Do that. Help with this. Go get a license. Go get a car. Go get a job so dad can take all my money."
"That is not fair and you know it."
"I don't care. Getting cancer wasn't fucking fair. Missing high school wasn't fucking fair either."
"Nobody blames you for those things. We're all trying to help you."
