a hypothetical analog?


"guns don't kill people. people kill people"

let's say, for a second, that the above defense of gun ownership wasn't retarded illogical irresponsible. let's say, for a second, that guns manufactured purpose was to show the love of god to others.

now, jump into your delorean, pump that fucker up to 88 mph, and zippity zip back to, let's say, august 28th of 1963. you're in the crowd, way back in the back. you can barely make out the lincoln memorial, much less hear the "i have a dream" speech. you kick yourself for not setting the time on the delorean for a few hours earlier, but are too tired or too lazy to hop back in the car and try again. you just decide to kick in the back with the other late-to-the-party'ers. you start talking to some well-enough meaning, middle-aged white guy. he's come to the march on washington for the spectacle of it all. he has taken his place near the back so he can hightail it back home before the crowd disperses and he's swallowed by the overwhelming mass of black people fellow human beings.

middle-aged white guy is nice enough you observe. during your conversation about the day and the era he lives in, he says something that strikes you as familiar.

"it's not really racism that hurts people. it's the racists."

you think to yourself, "what the fuck?", but you keep that profanity in your brain and respond with a curious, "hunh?"

"we all got racism in us, son. we can't help it. it's the world we live in. there's, what, 189 million people in this country nowadays? that's a whole lot history, filled with slavery and our country being okay with slavery. now, we don't got slavery. we just got people who love black people like the bible tells us to, and we got people who are trying to pretend they love black people like the bible tells us to, and we got people that still wish we had slavery. all of us are sick. we all have the racism. it's in our dna. it's how our country was born. it'll always be in us." 

you nod your head because you don't know if this guy is batshit crazy or the grandfather you never had. either way, you want him to keep talking.

"there's 189 million of us in this country, son. even if we wanted to, we couldn't ask everyone to give us their racism back. it's just not possible. we just got to hope that the older this country gets, the more of them that still want slavery will die off." 

the racists?

"yep. the ones that take them ugly thoughts that we all have in our heads and let 'em all out. shoot black people. spray 'em with hoses. keep their kids away from the black ones. burn crosses in their yards. 

it's not the racism that's the problem. it's the racists."

i gotta go. he's done talking. i better get home." 

you sit there and let the mass of people wash past you. some of 'em give a double-take to your sweet-ass ride, but most of them look happy to go where they are going. not where you're going.

back to the future.

--------

after sarah link-bombed my facebook timeline this afternoon, the above scenario flashed through my head while reading the ensuing conversation. i don't know why the delorean in my mind took me to 1963 and not to some other important and formative date in our country's history. maybe i'm just already feeling black history month. maybe it was "the racism" inside me. who knows.

the gun thing, as i've noted many times here in the last couple months, kills me. the discussion kills me. people talking about losing their freedoms and rights is starting to kill me.

"thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." a commenter on the christian left blog said that uttering those words today would be tantamount to calling for a revolution, and they'd be right.

we are so fucking fascinated and entitled to these country specific rights and freedoms of ours that we casually and conveniently lose sight that being born here versus the middle of the rain forest was just dumb luck. we casually and conveniently lose ourself in what we enjoy and what we've earned versus what is best for the greater good. we hide behind what can be passed through our broken legislative system instead of taking a proper stand. and we casually and conveniently play the "well, i'll never be that crazy motherfucker that abducts kids off school buses" card with no regard for the guy that actually is that crazy motherfucker.

the old-timer in my pretend past was well-meaning, but he was wrong. it's not the racists that are the problem. it's, of course, the racism.

mlk didn't "have a dream today" of no more racists. he had a dream of no more racism.

now, let's get back to the subject at hand.

"guns don't kill people. people kill people."

"we've got to attack mental-illness."

"we've got to have less violence in movies and video games."

"i just shoot my handheld weapon of mass-destruction for fun. at paper targets and beer bottles."

"my gun that was passed down to me from my great, great, great grandpappy has never been shot. never will be shot. i'm not giving up that gun. you're asking me to give away my grandpappy."

the hypothetical analog in 1963 is not, i repeat, not apples to apples.

but the sentiment is.

the sentiment is that i am choosing to ignore the problem at the same time i'm glossing over the symptom of the problem. the sentiment is one of passing the buck. the sentiment is "it could never happen to me." the sentiment is prideful. the sentiment places more importance on "your" life than "their" life. the sentiment implies that something must be done, but washington is too broke to fix it.

the sentiment is for shit.

"thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

why say that shit if we don't really mean it? you think there are guns in heaven? for real??? heavenly shooting ranges where you just blow off some of that angel angst after saint peter picked your pocket in texas hold 'em again?

alright.

our world, on the whole, man. we don't want heaven on earth. if we did, mission work and caring for others and taking extra special care of the poor wouldn't just be a vacation to build a church somewhere in mexico. or an exception to the rule. it would be a lifestyle. a way.

the way.

we don't want heaven on earth. we want our guns. we want what we've earned, dadgummit. we want more drug tests. we want what'll make it through the congress, because ain't shit making it through congress.

we want for shit.

the gun thing, man. it's not a choice. it's not a debate.

it's a mutation. it's a perversion. it's scary. and it's sad.

i have a dream, too. and don't misunderstand me. it's a bigger dream than you turning in your guns because it sends the smallest of messages that you're interested more in the greater good than your born in the usa rights.

but for the moment, i do wish the "good" people would turn in their guns. throw 'em in a pit. burn 'em. ban them. stop manufacturing the ammunition. and let the racists the bad guys eventually die off.

stop making excuses. stop being afraid.

what are you afraid of?

god's got this.

doesn't he?

"omar coming"
(part one)


it's time for another series.

after the newtown massacre, we did the micro-blogging series on my feelings on guns and gun control.

over a couple years ago, we did a meditation on the epic propagandhi album, supporting caste.

over the last several months, i've been kind of obsessed with the best television show my world has ever seen, the wire.

the wire tells the story of two baltimores and, depending how willing you are to extrapolate the themes, two americas. one "baltimore" is the one that you and i and most of the rest of the white people like us live in. born into lower-middle to middle to upper-middle class families, we are conditioned and trained into certain institutions. we go to middle class schools around where we live. if we don't want to go to school with too many black people want a more intimate or religious based education, we find a local private school. we likely begin our religious education and spiritual formation in whatever church institution our parents or grandparents decided long ago we would attend. we are trained to believe our local, state, and federal governments are worked by "the people", "for the people". we vote because we think it matters. we work, likely, in a corporate institution that continues to fool us that there is still a middle class in our america. in our jobs, we are socialized with the idea that if we work hard, we will move up the ladder. if we work hard, we will earn standard of living raises, we might earn an end of the year bonus every three or four years, and we convince ourselves that this standard of living is what we are meant to do. by the time we are adults, we invite the obligations of family and children and mortgages and car payments into our lives, further limiting our life equity and further narrowing the window of flexibility and happiness that every human allegedly possesses at birth. we go to school. we get our education. we look for a job. we find a 9 to 5. we work. buy a starter home. and we work. to the weekend. and then we work. and then we grow up. we hopefully live long enough to retire. and we live out the rest of our days with far too little health and physical ability to properly appreciate our hard earned golden years.

if we are lucky, we are shaken out of our ignorance at a still relatively young age. we realize that this "baltimore" is bullshit, nothing more than an "oz" perpetrated upon us by the very few people in the city/country with real or or inherited wealth, perpetrated upon us with such skill that we continue to vote these people into office and let them control our lives and allow them to brainwash us to the point that we shit on other human beings because they are gay or because they are poor or because they don't have insurance or because they are on welfare or because they are on drugs or because they are black don't like the wire.

again, this "baltimore" is all bullshit, a manufactured matrix that we are okay with because the world around us, the rich around us, have conditioned us to be fine with just being "fine".

on the other side of the same coin is the other "baltimore". the side of the city where the more black colorful characters are born. the avon and deangelo barksdales. the stringer bells. the omars. the prop joes. the wallaces. the randys. the michaels. the namonds. the dukies. the marlo stringfields. the slingers. the hoppers. the heroes in this baltimore are born into their own broken institutions. they go to school, too, but their schools are for shit. glorified daycares that don't care about learning as much as they care about getting the kids to the next class to the next day to the fuck out of my classroom to the next grade to hopefully the eighth grade before the next dropout. they go to church, too, but only because the matriarchs of the family have already witnessed too many of their children the subject of burial services services from those pews. religion is not a way of life. it's an escape. from hell on earth. falling into the habit of slinging drugs and joining the gang that will have you are not questions of "if?" but "when?". on this side of baltimore, the only ladder is life, and you are graded by how long you live and how hard you live. everything else is peripheral bullshit.

both sides of baltimore in the wire have their institutions. and the tragedy of the story is, no matter what side of the city you live on, the characters are likely to be betrayed by the institution they claim as their own. superiors on both sides of the tracks will use soldiers as scapegoats when scandal or street war erupts, and the likelihood of any major players that hold any real power being affected is slim.

i am headlong into season four (of five) of the series now, the season in which the producers of the show take on and take down the city's education system. i already feel drawn to the four kids we've been introduced to, and i am already nervous about how the show will likely destroy them in some cruel and unusual way.

as i think about and reflect on this piece of entertainment, my mind goes in a couple of different directions. obviously, i've been living out my own story in my own church institution for 14 years. i want to use some of my favorite themes from the show to approach my church experience in different ways than i have on this blog up to this point in the last six years.

secondly, we are living in a depressing and fascinating time. based purely on the parts of themselves humans put on social media, we are living in a time where good people, smart people, shit on other humans all the time. we've created terms like "makers" and "takers", the takers playing the role of the black bad guys. the makers are those that feel like they've worked hard and deserve what they have and how dare such and such bad guy take my tax money or my job or my place in line at mcdonald's if they aren't willing to submit themselves to a drug test.

it's all very cowardly. it's all very against the way of christ. against the moral responsibility of shared worth and equal value. and it's all very sad.

and it's all very human.

and so, we'll go.

just like the show's creator, david simon, i have grown to be "cynical about institutions", but, like the show, i'd like to believe that i am humanistic about the characters that are trapped inside them.

just be warned.

omar coming.

dead girlfriends


someone was giving some friends of mine a piece of experiential advice this week after those friends had just witnessed the birth of their beautiful baby girl. the someone congratulated the new parents, warned them of the hardness of the journey to come and then reminded them that the kid would, in fact, come with an instruction manual... "several thousand years old and god breathed" or something like that.

i smiled to myself and thought, "yeah, right."

i've had the pleasure of being responsible for three daughters in my life, and I honestly can't think of one time that the bible helped me with anything other than perspective in their rearing.

maybe that's all the friend of my friends had in mind. maybe not.

either way, what interested me more was my reaction to her good intentions.

when the news of manti te'o broke last week, i soaked up every morsel of information available for several days straight. one of two to three overriding narratives of the entire college football season was the notre dame linebacker and his ability to get past and through the tragedy of losing his beloved grandmother and inspirational girlfriend on the same day in september. what a story! what a guy! what a...

hoax?!

the dead girlfriend never existed. she was manufactured, just like te'o's story. manufactured and perpetuated every time notre dame won a game and continued their march towards an unexpected, undefeated regular season.

when the story hit the fan last wednesday, i couldn't find enough warm bodies to tell. my fellow gm buddies up in louisville and i laughed and laughed and laughed as we wrapped our head around what had to be the most awesome thing to happen to us all week. we daydreamed memes. we made fun of the notre dame linebacker. we reveled in how terrible a performance he had versus alabama, and as we deconstructed the fallacy that was his fictional college football season, we felt good about it all.

we ripped a fellow human apart. with very little shame. with very little concern.

now the story is over a week old. and i couldn't give a shit.

that's how these things work. something bigger may not come along, but something newer always will.

there's always a new target. a new player to pull down from the mythical pedestal espn or i put him on.

and so, in sneaks the shame.

now that it's no longer fun to make fun of manti te'o, i ask myself why i ever did it in the first place.

am i that dark-hearted? am i just that cynical? am i that much of a lemming?

maybe.

probably.

so, what?

i don't know, man.

we all have our dead girlfriends. white lies or white wishes that we allow to become black lies that we then allow to define us.

not doing anything of real world value today? fuck it. make up a story about yourself and roll with it.

it's easier that way.

the world tells us we are not worthwhile enough to just try. to just play baseball. to just enjoy watching hockey. to just participate. to just love someone you've never met.

no, we've got to do more than try. we've got to be the fucking best we can, man. we better have made at least one all-star team. we better skate better than that other club hockey schmo. we better have a real, live, beautiful girlfriend that is attractive, smart and loves sports. otherwise, you suck.

so says the world.

and so we build these lies around ourselves.

"i'm good enough. i'm smart enough. and doggone it. people like me."

fuck you, stuart! did you cure cancer!

there's this pervasive attitude going around that merely observing and participating in life isn't good enough. it's the same attitude that at some point turns into hating people on welfare.

and i'm part of the problem.

i have said out loud that the reason i got all hot and bothered about the dead girlfriend story was because i was offended at it being shoved down my sports-swallowing throat for four months and it ending up all being a lie. to be fair, there is some truth to that.

moreso, though, after giving it more than a few days worth of thought, i think i loved it because it made me feel better about myself.

i've never had a fake, dead girlfriend that i never met face to face. i'm more awesome at life than an all-american notre dame linebacker!

what an incredible douche that guy is!

i bet he's gay and just afraid to say it!

i'm such an asshole.

if someone wants to have an internet relationship with someone he's never seen, who cares?

if someone wants to just play some soccer and not be great at it, isn't that awesome, too?

if someone digs pawn stars a little harder than feels right, cool, yeah?

we all have our dead girlfriends.

resolutions

(2013)

2012 was the first time in a long time that i didn’t post new year’s resolutions. i usually get to them toward then end of january anyway, and the end of january, 2012 was when we all know i got reintroduced to the cancer thing. not only did it throw off the resolutions on the blog, but it threw off the blog, on the whole, for about 10 months. only when we got to the end of the year did i get back to writing with any consistency, and, even then, it was shrouded with cancer this and chemo that. all relevant to my life-living, for sure, but you can only say so many times how shitty you feel before even you stop being interested in hearing about it, yourself. i’m starting to get tired of hearing about it.

so, it’s time to get back on the wagon, and it’s time to “get busy living” with at least as much moxy as i spent the lion’s share of the last year “get(ting) busy dying”.  ten resolutions. ten goals. ten ways to make 2013 a better place than 2012.

1) don’t die – i  always start with this. and, in a haunting way, i know that the one year that i fail will be my last, but, here’s the deal. i don’t want to die. not this year. maybe not ever. i don’t know that i’ll ever be ready to die. for 33 years, i took life for granted. i would live ‘til i was 85-95. i’d struggle getting around, and then i’d pass in my sleep. so naïve. every year up until 2009, i didn’t actively have to fight for my life. and then i did. cancer grew. we cut it out. 2010 and ’11 were a little more stable and had more psychological conflict than physical. 2012, i got back in the ring. cancer grew. again. we cut it out. again. and then the chemotherapy started. and it’s been an active fight not to die ever since. the first five months of 2013 are going to be hard, but if they help me “don’t die”, fuck it. i’ll take it.

2) be more positive…about everything – how often am i critical versus how often do i offer praise? if this blog can be considered a sample, the proof is right here on this site. now, i am not alone. as humans, we want people to know what grinds our gears in a way that we don’t when it comes to what makes us happy. i don’t really get it, but it’s just the way it happens. being happy takes work. saying you’re happy takes work. finding new ways to be happy takes work. telling other people positive things takes work. in the end, is the work worth it? data suggests it is. i am sitting in the louisville airport right now waiting on a flight out and away from the pet supplies plus yearly summit. our motivational speaker spent a lot of his time and energy on the power of positive reinforcement. he suggested that to make the same emotional impact on a person as just one criticism, you must give five praises. ridiculous. that sounds so hard. but the more thought i give to it, it sounds worth it. i hardly ever go out of my way to say nice things to my family or my friends or my employees. on the other hand, i yell and scream and bitch at all of them like it’s going out of style. granted, my temper is shorter than usual, but the fuse being short shouldn’t dictate the amount of anger that tends to pour out of me at the drop of a hat. i need to change this. hannah and caroline are both old enough to log my tantrums into their long-term memory banks. and that’s fine. every parent gets mad. every parent will yell. what i’ve got to do is find a way to balance out all that negativity. ideally, not only could i balance it out, but what if, at the end of the year, my kids and friends and employees could tell you that they felt more appreciated this year than they did last? it would make their world better. and it would make my world better. all around. i don’t know how i’ll quantify the results of this one at the end of the year to grade myself as pass or fail, but i’ve got to be better at this. for everyone around me.

3) run the vulcan 10k – this one includes a lot of work, but the essence is this. i felt better about myself when i was running. i was healthier and in a better mood. i loved being lean and as in shape at 35 as i ever in my life had been. i won’t be able to run, more than likely, ‘til the end of may. but that should give me plenty of time to get back to 10k strength, and that will be a great achievement for me.

4) help get humc a proper vision statement – this one should happen soon, but it’s no less an important goal for me. our long range planning committee has been working on and off for almost two years now on this project, trying to answer the question, “who is huffman united methodist church?” we think we have done our due diligence as a committee and we think we are fairly representative of the church, in general. this sunday, we take our recommendations to the portion of the church who have genuine interest in the future of our congregation and we’ll see if they agree or disagree. if they agree, we'll move forward with a quickness. If not, well, we’ll cross that bridge if it happens.

5) don’t get fat – those that have followed my resolutions for years should be proud of me that this isn’t number two per usual. my vanity has taken quite the hit over the last few years, but it’s not gone completely. fat and i just don’t get along. not exercising the way i’ve wanted to and i don’t get along. not eating as much as i damn well please and i don’t get along. either way, i’ve learned to use a phrase these last five months that i used to make fun of. “portion control”. instead of eating two or three servings of whatever at dinner because i had already burned 750 calories earlier in the day, i now may not finish everything on my plate, because i am already at my arbitrary calorie limit for the day. sad, but true. dammit, i am not getting fat.

6) do something other than bitch about guns – this one is going to take some work, but i don’t know what else to do. facebook, twitter, this blog and the like are great outlets for my whining, but it’s not going to change anything other than a very few minds. i don’t want to take your guns. or your rights. or your hunting privileges. but the backlash against the idea of gun control makes me want to fucking vomit. i get stat-ripped bullshit about hammers and bats and drunk driving. it’s not that i don’t want people not to die from hammers, it’s just that stat-ripping me about hammers makes you sound like a moron that is more in love with your gun than being a part of a solution to save one precious and fragile life from being blown away. i don’t have tons of disposable time, but i’d like to find a local and impactful way to get on the front line of a solution, not just offering my opinions from afar.

7) get limbo out of room 217 – firstly, this isn’t all on me, i get that. i think limbo has grown up and away from being kevin’s little baby, so maybe i should amend the wording. help get limbo out of room 217 at the church. we love our sunday morning time. we love our christmas parties. we love whenever we see each other, but we need to do more. from the jump, we’ve wanted to find ways to affect our world around us in relevant ways. my health and, well, just life have impacted that progress, but i think we’re ready to make it happen again. the conversation started anew without me last week. i can’t wait to get back and enter the fray next sunday and see what we can accomplish this year.

8) blog more – i mean, why not, right? this should be a gimme considering how low the number of posts were last year, but i am not putting this on the list for it to be a gimme. i am putting it on the list because i love to write. some posts, i am on. some posts, i am not. but i need to get back to it. because i like it. and because i want to get better. write. write to make sense. write to make sense to others. and write to give my girls what they deserve. a better understanding of who their daddy was when they weren’t aware that he did anything other than work, spend time with them, and go to falcons games.

9) for the love of sweet baby jesus, go see lebron games play in person – i think i’ve failed on this one two or three times by now, and that is ridiculous. he plays one or two games in atlanta every flipping year. i don’t want to see lebron when he’s a shell of his former self playing pick up games at the civic center in birmingham. i need to see him now, while he’s flash fucking gordon.

10) keep fuck(ing) this cancer shit – cancer will always be a part of me now, even if it’s not in me at the moment (i hope). but “fuck this cancer shit” isn’t just about the now. it’s not just about getting through the chemo phase of the program. it’s not just about praying for and hoping for another clean scan come may. the whole #ftcs thing, for me, has become a lifestyle. it’s become a coming out party of sorts. life is too short, man, to not make a difference. to not ruffle some feathers. to not call people out on their irrational obama bullshit or how cracked people get about tarnishing the legacy of the sweet baby jesus. for me, “fuck this cancer shit” doesn’t spit in people’s faces. it doesn’t mean to be disrespectful. it just may mean that your worldview doesn’t match up to mine and we need to figure out how to work that shit out. not for me. not for you. but for the betterment of us. and our world. and our future. it’s way past time to redefine what is unusual. to redefine appropriate. to redefine taboo. what the fuck matters in this world other than actively loving others and actively loving the ones we care about the most the best we possibly can? to me, “fuck this cancer shit” will mean being the best that i can possibly be, in every situation i can control, and coming out at the end of 2013 with a feeling of accomplishment that i haven’t had in years.

happy january, and make a resolution. challenge me on mine. go get yours.         

#ftcs

fuck this cancer shit
#ftcs


dateline - eastern urology, st. vincent's hospital, january 24, 2012, 2:30 p.m. - it was one year removed from january, 2011, the appointment at which i had graduated to yearly visits. i had not seen dr. wade in twelve months, and, as usual, i was certain shit would be bad. i went in to the ct closet, did my scan, got injected with the iodine contrast, tasted metal in my mouth, felt all warm and tingly inside, did another scan. dr. wade came into the closet to read the scan. he looked at it with sarah. as usual, i waited around the corner from the computer desk, and tried not to read sarah's face. dr. wade read the scan. as he said in october of 2009, january of 2010, and july of 2010, and then in january of 2011, to his eyes, everything looked like it should. we left his office. i took a deep breath. all was well.

or so we thought.

dateline - pet supplies plus, january 30, around 2:00 - my cell phone rings. i don't recognize the number, but i recognize that the number was from around the area, the first three numbers "836". my first thought was, "it's the daycare." so i answered.

"hello."
"is this mr. o'kelley?"
"yes, this is kevin."
"mr. okelley, this is sandy from the st. vincent's pet scan center. i wanted to confirm your your appointment for tomorrow morning."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"i'm sorry, what? i didn't know...what do you mean...i wasn't aware...i'm sorry...this has caught me off guard...why do i have a pet scan appt....sandy?"
"i'm so sorry. i didn't realize you were unaware. dr. wade set up the appt. for you this afternoon."
"but, i just saw dr. wade last monday. he said everything was fine."
"i am sorry. you will have to talk to dr. wade. i don't have any details past your appointment time."

holy. mother. of fuck.

i remember the feeling of my head spinning. it was the same feeling as it was back in 2009 when dr. wade read my first scan, expecting to see a kidney stone, instead finding a large fucking mass in my right kidney. my head spun again. i stumbled into the office. i told kathy and someone else to get the fuck out. i called sarah.

"what the fuck?"
"i am sorry. dr. wade called me. i was going to call you. i didn't think they would call you."
"so, what the fuck?"
"when they sent your scan to the radiologist, they found something."
"they found what?!"
"we don't know. it could just be scar tissue from the surgery that has formed. that's what we need to find out."

oh no.

dateline - st. vincent's east pet scan center, january 31 - i had the pet scan at 830. and then i waited. it would be that afternoon or wednesday morning before i would know the results.

dateline - pet supplies plus, february 1 - sarah called dr. wade that morning. no answer. he was in surgery. she finally got a callback. he had made us an appointment.

"we have a lot to talk about."

fuck.

we made it to dr. wade's office. the look on his face told me things weren't good. it was all i could do not to throw up right there on his desk. i didn't. i sat down. i listened. i cried as he told me. there was a spot in the area of the removed kidney that glowed. likely not scar tissue. likely a recurrence. but there was something else. there were three or four small spots in my upper chest area that were glowing, too. those would need to take priority. they could be lymph nodes reacting to what was happening in the kidney bed. or, they could be something else.

fuck.

i called katie. i asked her if she and amy could meet me and sarah at the church before dinner. sarah and i walked with them upstairs at the church and sat down in the phoenix sunday school class. i bawled in front of them all in a way that i never have. what i heard from dr. wade was my death sentence. it was now when and not if. i was done. i cried to sarah and katie and amy and then we went to fellowship dinner.

we went to a book study steve lawrence was leading. at the end, during prayer requests, i told that group that something had been found. i cried in front of them. i made some of them cry. the reset button on my battle with this horrible thing had been pressed. i was back at square one. only, this time, the road would be scarier, longer, and harder.

FUCK.

on february 15, i had a mediastinoscopy to biopsy the area in and around my lungs. several days later, the results came back. that area was clean. it was all benign.

fuck this cancer shit.

march 22nd, i had my third surgery in three years, this time going back in to the spot that started it all, to remove the recurrence. got that motherfucker, too. it hadn't spread.

fuck this cancer shit.

after consulting with two oncologists, we decided to do treatment. i was told there was a "chance" i was cured. it might never come back. then again, i had a 97% chance of that not happening back in 2009. it came back. so, we weren't interested in taking any chances. i wasn't interested in taking any chances. and so i started chemotherapy.

the last seven months, man.

i've documented my travels many times here, so i won't revisit it all. it's been hell, though. literal hell. or what i imagine hell would be like if i believed that hell was a real place. after three or four days of my 28 day cycle, every day after is a different degree of torture. a different degree of pain. discomfort. displeasure. disconnect. all torture. self-inflicted. i've chosen this path. a year of pain on the chance that, when i'm done, i'll never have to deal with renal cell cancer ever again.

will it work? who knows. a clean scan in november was a good place to start. but i've had clean scans in the past. i need years worth of clean scans before i'll let myself believe i'm done with this shit for good. until i can throw myself back into the rest of the population that has as good of a chance of being eaten alive by a feral cat as they do dying from renal cell cancer at my age.

it's working now, though. working on ruining my body from the inside out. i haven't run since july. haven't played more than a handful of softball games. can't even think yet of playing basketball. can only do hundreds of push ups and situps and hope that i can walk with less of a limp today than i had yesterday. the toxicity is literally killing cells that weren't ready to die, the side-effects from which are affecting every part of my body's normal activity.

take for granted walking? tasting food? eating without pain? having a day without diarrhea? without unwavering, brutal fatigue? brushing my teeth without tearing up and spitting out pools of blood each morning and night? my body hair not being prematurely white? constant nausea? not having sores in fucked up places?

no. i will never take any of those things for granted. not anymore.

because 2012 decided to offer me another lesson in perspective. i guess i didn't get enough three years ago.

most days, you won't know i'm hurting. i won't let you.

because fuck this cancer shit.

it can take my body, but it's not going to take my spirit. fuck that. my spirit's mine.

i've got my family. my friends. my church. my employees. my falcons. my alabama football. my braves. my american horror story. they want me on that wall. they need me on that wall.

or so i am telling myself. because i have to. to live.

the first five months of 2013 are going to be hard, just like the last 11 months of 2012 were hard. but on most of those first five months, you won't know i'm hurting. i won't let you.

because fuck this cancer shit.

i win 2012, cancer. fuck you. fuck you. and fuck you.

i'm going to win 2013, too.

it's a promise.