Scared Bunny

One thing kind of surprises me. That is that most people never look at timestamps on entries. I can tell because people would wonder why the hell I write so late at night when I should be in bed. It's basically a bad case of insomnia. Once I do fall asleep I can sleep forever, but I am having a hell of a time falling asleep. I don't want to take any medication that will make waking up even harder.

So tonight I ended up watching a film I have seen before, High Roller: The Stu Unger Story. I doubt anyone that reads this has seen it, so here's a brief summary. Stu was possibly the best card player in history. He was a champion at both poker and gin.. His gin play was so strong that they even stopped allowing him to enter tournaments because other players wouldn't enter if he did. His poker was strong enough that he won the World Series 3 times, which no other player has done.

Of course there is another reason they made the film. He was a gambling and cocaine addict. He would lose more on sports betting than he won playing poker. He spent a fortune on cocaine. Over the course of his life he went from being a millionaire to bankrupt 4 times. He died at age 45 due to heart damage from the years of drug use.

I mention this because I sometimes wonder if my life will continue to be like that. No, I am not a gambling and cocaine addict. Hell, I have never done anything like that. But my life has been such a roller coaster. It seems every time I get up I mess it up or otherwise lose everything. I can honestly say that at one point or another I have lost everything except my son at one point or another, and sometimes I feel as if I have lost part of my relationship with him because we are apart most of the time. I also wonder how his being around me during these highs and lows has affected him.

But even though that is something I think about a lot, that isn't what I want to write about. See, I know that Stu died from drug abuse, but how much of a toll does the roller coaster life take on a person? I can tell you that you can feel physical reactions to the fall. Sometimes it actually feels as if you had physically fallen. Your heart races. Your stomach churns. It has to be doing damage. Is it going to shorten my life?

I can handle my mortality. I can even handle the idea I will live a shorter than normal life. But I do not want to die while my son is a child. I want to live long enough to see him graduate college. I want to be there when he gets married. I am honestly scared that I won't live long enough to see those things.

I need to find a way to stop the cycles, and I have no idea how to do that.

Labels: children, death, life, movies