Thomas Wictor

Today is a milestone. I took the first step in my recovery from the past two years. Finally I went on a long walk. A physical-exercise walk, up steep hills. I’ll do this six days a week, the way I did before January 16, 2013, the day my parents told me that they had cancer.

What this means is that I’m now reversing the tide for real. Intentions don’t count for much in certain situations; it’s actions that show your commitment. Now I’ve done it, and I know I’ll be okay.

It’s been touch and go for more than two years. My brother Tim is a lot more disciplined than I am. He keeps his house and himself in tip-top condition.

“You can’t let yourself sink below a certain level,” he said yesterday, “because then you can’t come back.”

On January 16, 2013, I had lots of plans. They’re all ashes now. What I’ve been doing for the past more-than-two-years is abiding, not living. There were several things I had to do before I could say that I’d come to terms with every genuinely hideous development that avalanched onto my head beginning January 16, 2013. The year after my parents’ deaths was worse than their passing, because I learned all of their secrets.

At the age of fifty-two, I had to decide whether I would create—not recreate—myself from scratch or simply continue on in the limbo that I entered in 2014.

One nagging duty was reintroducing my two formerly feral cats to each other. Lyle Cat is a gigantic, aggressive, funny, selfish jerk. Brother Cat is a large, sensitive, fearful, quirky, manipulative weirdo. I had to bring these estranged brothers back together because we need to demolish Lyle Cat’s house and rebuild it.

My house is too small for two cats, so they’re going to live with Tim. I kept putting off the reunion because Brother Cat seemed too fragile. Finally I did it almost two weeks ago. It was rough going for several days. I kept them in separate parts of the house and wedged the door between them open. Little by little I widened the crack until they could slip through.

There were a few really bad fights. I had to get a squirt gun and use it on Lyle Cat once. Here are my cats tonight.

They now sleep side by side and groom each other, purring.

People reading this are asking themselves, “What the heck was the big deal?”

Well, you need to understand that I’m running on fumes. I can’t bear any more cruelty, pain, or suffering. It’s a strange affliction in that even though I’ve been in limbo, I can also do things like calmly ruin the life of the eighty-three-year-old Nazi who was trying to ruin my life. My own life is already ruined. It never really began. As Tim says, we’ve lived several afterlives. Attacks on me don’t have any effect unless they’re massive and prolonged. I had to go to the hospital last year due to the worst gastritis bout I’ve ever endured.

But that’s been the only physical fallout since I began defending Israel. Though I’m assaulted daily by the sickest people in human history, it usually doesn’t get to me.

After I reintroduced my cats to each other and taught them how to get along, the next goal was to start working out again. Today I took my first walk since January 16, 2013. Both my parents were physical mutants in that they chain-smoked for half a century, never exercised, and had the worst diets ever, but both remained incredibly strong into their late seventies and lived to be eighty-four and eighty-five. I inherited their freakish genes, so in another three weeks I’ll be back where I was in 2013.

Every time I’ve made plans, they’ve exploded in my face. Yesterday I was almost killed by street racers. They were doing about 100 miles per hour (161 kilometers per hour), two cars rocketing down the street, one on my side of the road, coming straight at me. There was nowhere for me to go. I slammed on the brakes, the kid in the car headed toward me slammed on the brakes, and the hulking SUV behind me slammed on the brakes. We all ended up a hair’s breadth from each other, but nobody hit anyone else. It was a bloody miracle.

Hey, thanks, Vin Diesel!

You know who did die in a car accident? This guy.

On November 30, 2013, Paul Walker was killed while riding in a Porsche that was doing 100 miles per hour on a city street. The driver—thirty-eight-year-old Roger Rodas—lost control on a curve popular with drifters. Here’s what can happen to drifters. Don’t worry: There’s no gore.

If the moronic kid behind the wheel hadn’t seen me in time yesterday, I’d be playing canasta with my parents right now. My city is populated almost exclusively by fans of Fast and Furious movies. There was a wreck a few years ago in which the car went under the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler. The top of the vehicle was sheared off, as were the heads of all six teenagers inside. It’s called “Darwinism.”

Although street racers, terrorists, Nazis, heart disease, and cancer can make me pass on, be no more, cease to be, expire and go to meet my maker, alter into a stiff, become bereft of life, rest in peace, push up daisies, make my metabolic processes history, put me off the twig, cause me to kick the bucket, shuffle off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, join the choir invisible, and convert to an ex-organism, I’m no longer in limbo.

Today I read that a twenty-seven-year-old British college student named Bahar Mustafa tweeted the hashtag #killallwhitemen using her university’s official Welfare and Diversity Officer(?) Twitter account.

This is Bahar Mustafa.

The only certainty is that white men have nothing to do with her issues. She’s like the genius Cindy Sherman, except Sherman is an artist whose characters are humorous, deliberate contrivances not intended to exist in real life.

I know all about why Bahar Mustafa is what she is. The difference between Bahar Mustafa and me is that I take responsibility for making of my life what I can. I decide whether I’ll give in to utter negativity or continue aspiring.

Today I proved to myself that I can shake off anything. Anything.