I ventured out today on this beautiful October day, didn't feel like getting out, but I had to run an errand in Morehead and go to the Dollar Store, so off I went.

When I got to the place where I was going to run my errand, the receptionist asked me if I was OK. I said, "Just a bit wobbly".

Fact is = I was disoriented, not attached to the real world, should not have been out by myself but I was, had nobody to drive me to where I needed to go. I left that office, drove to the BP station, got me a large cup of coffee and a carved turkey sandwich at Subway's. The person who was making the sandwich asked me if I was OK and asked me if she could help me get a cup of coffee. It dawned on me as I made my way back to the house that people saw me differently than the person I saw in the bathroom mirror before I left on my journey to the outside world.

Fact is, the MS had been "relapsing" the last couple of days and that is the way my physical body presented itself to the public. I know there are other people suffering from MS, but for a 71-year-old to suffer from it, according to my doctors, "it is almost always fatal" = I'm living on "borrowed time" = never wanted to say that before but I'm saying it here for the first time = two doctors have told me that prognosis. I have told people otherwise, but what I just said is the real truth. I'm taking all my medicine the doctors prescribed for me in July for the pneumonia and the long-lasting symptoms that come with it, I'm following the diet the doctors prescribed to keep my weight down, to make my physical body as comfortable as possible, but nothing I do at this point can stop the inevitable outcome of this illness from happening = it is what it is = I am walking that Final Mile, day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year.

I can't help but wonder what kind of footprints my "father" left behind in his 81 years here on earth. The man I was always told was my father, even though his name did not appear on my birth certificate, was born in 1888, 

twenty-three years after Lincoln's assassination!! = and my father died in 1969. He died in his garden of a stroke = I have a picture of him = someone told me he was in his 60s when the picture was taken = but I picture him in a straw hat working in the garden like his ancestors had, toiling to make a living, shuffling through his journey of life, leaving his footprints somewhere in the soil of the garden.

Never got the chance to measure myself against him, never felt the need to, but always felt an emptiness in my heart and soul of something missing.

Tried to fill that emptiness over the years but not succeeding, even my marriage was an attempt to do that, to no avail. When I talk of "I did this" and "I did that" up until 1989, I was really with my wife, but when she invalidated our marriage in 2010 by telling me of her affairs, I don't feel it necessary to put her name in the narrative of my life, because she betrayed me by doing something she always accused me of doing, having several affairs.

She had her single female friends, but when I made friends with a single guy, she always wanted to meet him. One time, I made the mistake of introducing her to one of my single male friends at work and she verbally pinned him to the wall, because she "disagreed" with his philosophy of life. The 2010 "breakup" we finally went through was when she became hateful and virulently spiteful in a bunch of emails to me and her "real" self came out. So, to me, she doesn't belong in the narrative of my life. Neither does my father, actually, because he was a non-person to me all my life and continues to be so.

My life today shows the burden of sadness and sickness that have shaped my soul and mind and my physical body = the way I walk, the way I talk, my emotional outbursts, my desire to be alone except for my babies, not trusting anyone, not being able to communicate on a human's level, because, to me, they always have a hidden agenda. I can sense the negative vibes in a person as soon as I meet them. I know it's not politically correct to judge a person on one's first impression, but honestly, I do. Only a few have passed the test and I have let them into my house and into my life, but only a select few. Until they betray me, if they do, then all bets are off.

This has been and is my journey = it's been a long and winding road, but it's been my journey = I own it = every curve and bump in it. I know I will be alone when I make my final journey to the Pearly Gates, but I know there is something great waiting for me there = Eternal Peace, for one thing and a reunion with all my babies.

My babies have become my life, I am indeed a member of the "Cat World" and proud to be one, but I also love and respect all animals, trying to be their voice because they cannot speak, so this is the picture I have of myself when I only have one baby left.

When he or she is gone, I will go right behind them, either with God's help or finding my own way to leave this Earth, or maybe the MS will do its "dirty deed" = because there is no way I could go on living in an empty house and staring at an empty front porch where their footprints and scratch marks will be there for all Eternity. The footprints of my life's journey will no longer make an impression as I get to the End of the Road, only the memories people have of me and of the marks, if any, I leave behind.