Fate Versus Lifestyle Versus Did I Deserve it?

I wrote this earlier and didn't publish it but then thought that the blog really ought to pick up on my "mindset" no matter what state it is in/ I'm a bit strange anyway - you just have to look at my collection of off the wall French film noir to see that. I think obliquely and laterally and sometimes if you are not on "my wavelength" or on the particular lateral thread I am thinking of at the time I say or write something, you will not get it and wonder why I am not under a Care in the Community Order. Be that as it may - it is probably worth publishing the stuff below so you get to see how your brain can drift off and think of the most absurd things.



This has been rattling around my head this afternoon. The earlier post where 25% of people felt that it was fate. I tend to sit on the 'it was my lifestyle' side of the fence and whilst I was considering that two things sprung to mind:

1. This time last year I felt that the time had come to change my lifestyle. I had come to a point where I had thought that all the harm I must have done to my body ought to be stopped, reversed whilst there was still a chance and I did do something about it. However when I look back and think how many years I thrashed my body and all the hours I worked and the drinking and smoking etc then there was bound to be a reaction. I had decided that as I wasn't getting any younger I ought to cool it. I was obviously far too late to do that. However, I have had a massive change in lifestyle and I feel better for it - I've not gone Vegan but I am just eating sensibly, regularly, not fasting or feasting (something I used to do regularly - I could 'not eat' for days and not sleep either). It all catches up with you.
2. The other thing I thought about was the "Did I deserve it?" argument and that is a bit of a strange one. I go back to the early days of Aids and the sorts of things that people said then and wonder whether anyone "deserved it". I perhaps brought it on myself and that cannot be denied so I think the answer actually is yes, I did deserve it. I knew some years back what smoking could do and I should have given up. The argument on whether we do enough to discourage smoking, how we argue that you shouldn't smoke in adverts and tax and other things can go on for ever and are subject for another day I think. I do reckon that I knew enough about things, had sufficient advice and could have made an informed decision. What I am certain about though is that smoking is addictive beyond a doubt and it is not easy to give up and stay given up. Someone telling you that you have Cancer is a very compelling reason to stay stopped though. On a last thought on this for the time being. All of my parent's generation and their parents smoked and it was in all the films and on TV it just beggars belief how we are reaping the whirlwind of that now not just smokers but all the passive smokers and those who were abused because they lived in the homes of smokers.

This all goes darker and deeper and is a real guilt trip for ex-smokers. Having brought this on myself and up to a point accepting that I injured myself I now have to face up to the possibility of actually harming other people - that really really does hurt and causes many of the sleepless nights and so much of the guilt isn't that I have Cancer, it is that I may have given it to anyone else. I can live with the former - I'm not sure I could live with the other.

It also occurred to me that when I was a child that I lived in a smoker's house and all my relatives smoked and everyone on the trains and buses smoked and so was it me or was it them.

And so, on and on you could go about this if you wanted. All these things play around in your brain whether you want them to or not. Then you start to consider the various facts that many people who get Lung Cancer (for example) have never smoked in their lives and you can then really start to get your mind swimming.

This is one of those rambling, nonsensical posts that will no doubt hit this blog from time to time. It doesn't mean anything really. It highlights the guilt you have as a "Cancer victim" and the guilt you then feel to others as an ex-smoker. It then goes on to look at your own victimisation as a child and these things go round and around in your head for hours at a time. I doubt there is anyone who just looks at it as an isolated thing at all.

I'm going to stop here as no matter what I write, or what I believe, this particular subject will just go around in circles. I guess it will resolve itself and each of the worries will find an answer sooner or later. Perhaps some never get answered or get answered at the last minute - who knows.