I’m not talking about the rather amusing movie by Terry Gilliam. I’m talking about a mental disorder where a person fakes or induces illness in order to gain the sympathy of others. In an age of attention whores, I suppose this represents the Mount Everest of attention-whoredom. What makes this particularly vile is that the whore in question abuses the trust of their friends in order to gain that attention. Any idiot can troll for their 15 minutes of fame on a forum or blog, but it takes an especially lame human being to betray the trust of friends in order to satisfy their need for sympathy and attention by claiming illness.
Cancer, to be specific.
“Mr. C” and I are well acquainted. You see, God has, in what appears to be a rarity for Him, given me a crystal clear picture of what will happen if I start smoking. Every member of my family who smoked is dead. Specifically, they died from Lung Cancer. Father. Grandmother. Grandfather. All dead. All dead from Lung Cancer. The members of my family who didn’t smoke? Well, the youngest of the ones who died did so in their 80’s. (ironically enough, smoke inhalation was involved) I have one family member who has rivaled Keith Richards for heaviest lifetime drug consumption, but she’s still ticking along in her mid-80s. Why? The one drug she hasn’t touched (at least in my lifetime) is cigarrettes.
You can imagine that I’m a little sensitive when the word “Cancer” comes into play.
So when I hear that a friend is diagnosed with Cancer, and I hear that this person is saying their goodbyes. I make it a point to show up. I care. I know, first hand, what it is like to comfort the dying. I know what it’s like to say goodbye for the last time. Saying “it sucks” is an insult to black holes everywhere.
So we say our goodbyes, and in the process, I manage to wear another set of treads down my own personal version of “Memory Lane from Hell”. I see the faces, I remember the last conversations, I feel it all over again. Some people are sad, but I’m past that part. I get into full-blown pissed-off-at-the-world-and-want-to-make-you-feel-my-pain mode. I open the door to the darkest parts of my soul and let the demons run wild for a little while. In non-dramatic parlance, I am not a very nice person when I go through this.
As bad as all of that sounds, it is nothing. It is something I will gladly bear for a friend, because at that moment, my friend needs me. Needs to know that someone is going to stand by them to the bitter end. It is an act of love, and an act of faith to comfort the dying. It is one of the things in life that allows a human being to unequivicably declare their friendship, their compassion, and their love for another human being.
It is also an act of trust.
In this case, a trust that was ultimately betrayed. It seems that she is not as sick as she has let on.
I would like to say that I am going to be the bigger man and not vent any hatred or bitterness about this. After all, in the long range scheme of things, what does it really matter? I could take solace in the fact that someone who I called a friend is NOT dying. I could “find the pony”.
There is an old story about a boy bounding downstairs on Christmas morning only to find the living room brimming over with horse manure. Undaunted, the boy exclaimed, “There must be a pony!” Wrapped within an unfailing youthful optimism, the boy could only see something good in what was an otherwise dire situation.
Instead, I’m going to let it out. There is no reason for me to hold this in to make someone feel better who has abused my trust in this way.
You (and you know who “You” are) are dead to me already. You’re not a person with thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams of their own. You are an abstract. You are an Internet-fucking-cliche, and know that as long as you continue to draw breath, whether it be for one minute, or one millennium, there will be someone on this Earth who feels nothing for you but contempt.
The great thing about contempt is that is eventually evolves into complete apathy. Not the “oh gee, that’s a shame” apathy when you read a news report about some stranger dying in a horrible accident, but rather the “I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire” kind of apathy. If you were sentenced to the electric chair and I won the lottery to pull the switch on your pathetic self, I would be popping open a can of beer before you stopped shaking and looking for a ride to the nearest bar to celebrate my service to the community.
Don’t be confused. I don’t hate you at all. I hope you live a long life with only yourself as company. I hope you get to walk down the same kind of memory lane that I do, and see the faces of the dead and dying as they leave you in this life, one-by-one. I hope every step on that path feels like burning coals and that when your own time comes, that you face it knowing that everyone who ever cared about you has already moved on either physically or emotionally and that you die utterly alone.
On second thought, you aren’t that important to me. I’m going to focus more on enjoying my own life.
