This Cowboy's Naked Truth

Well, tonight is a night that has left me numb and lost.  It wasn't but just a few years ago I lived in a nice home with all the niceties, cars, furnishings, pool, a business, family, friends and a future.  Then one day, things began to unravel, the economy took it's nasty turn downhill.  We had just purchased our first home and three months later the housing market tanked.  I ended up having to close my business after going through my savings and retirement to try and keep the doors open, hoping that next month we would turn the corner, but the corner never came.  Soon the marriage began to crumble, we moved from our home of twenty years into a two bedroom apartment and tried to make a go, but it was just too much when I came down with cancer.  My wife at the time, a wonderful woman, had been dragged through the coals and her resentment was evident with each look or word towards me.  I filed for a divorce.  Soon after I told her and my daughters that we could no longer afford to live in the apartment and that they would have to move in with my wife's mother in Buena Park.  The tension was so thick you could see it, but the girls got moved, I moved out all the furniture in storage and left.  Yes, I left.  I took off for Minnesota to try and get away, find a little happiness, but all I found was misery.  The good thing about my time in Minnesota was that I applied for their medical system and in six weeks found all the doctors I needed, received all my medications, was approved for a bone marrow transplant and they found a donor.  My life could be saved.  They were ready to get the transplant going in six weeks, but I was feeling guilty for leaving and my daughters needed me.  The decision was simply stay and get healed or come back and give my youngest daughter the father and support that her four older brothers and sisters had.  I chose to come back to California.  Sometimes when your so miserable with someone that doesn't love you anymore, all the drama, strains of life, you just want to put your head in the sand and cover up.  I can make up any excuse I want, but what I did was inexcusable and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret my decision to leave for a couple of months.  Now I am back, homeless, living out of suitcase and battling this cancer.  Everyone has looked from the outside in, but no one has seen my life from the inside out.  Cancer has stripped me of my health.  It has taken me from a muscular 210 pound man down to as little as 145 pounds, unable to get myself out of bed or feed myself.  I have been able to rebuild myself somewhat, for I am now 170 pounds but the pain, and believe me, I have had pain in my life, is just taking over.  I don't bitch about it, don't cry about it, don't really talk about it.  I live with it and I believe now that it is a form of payback for the wrongs I have committed in my life.  I am not perfect, I am the worst sinner of all of you, but I turned my life around years back but just like a man who goes to prison, people just don't forget or forgive.
So many people have been following my plight, hoping and praying that I will overcome this disease and come out on top, but the truth is, I just don't care anymore.  Today I had my ass kicked and tonight I am setting the stage for I wish to not fight anymore.  Never in my life would I have ever believed or thought that I would be living out of suitcase, wondering when and where I was going to get my next meal or shower.  Fortunately tonight, two great friends have invited me into their lovely home to allow me sleep in a bed instead of my truck.  I don't mind the truck, been there, done that years and years ago.  I have slept in barns and horse stalls, even a cemetery one night to get out of the frozen wind, but it is nice to sleep in a bed.  I lay here an wonder how many people just take it for granted that they have one tonight.  I don't think many people think about it.  It's just a given just like the sun is going to come up in the morning.  I will say this, I take nothing for granted, nothing.
I am not feeling sorry for myself, but more coming to terms with myself and accepting what is about to come.  I cannot go through this bone marrow transplant without adult supervision when I get out of the hospital.  There is none and I will not ask anyone to do such a thing.  So, I have elected to severe ties with my doctors and any further treatments and let the cards lie where they lie.  I will live what days I have to the fullest, enjoy what time I have left and let God handle the rest.