"For Whom The Bell Tolls"
This book title reminds me that the bells were going to toll almost for my funeral.
Has it ever crossed your mind to think...
What can go through the mind of a homeless person before his death?
Does the pain he caused himself hurt more than dying alone? Or does he die pleased because he satisfied the pleasures that enslaved and destroyed him?
I, who have gone through the misery of homelessness and addictions, can share what it feels like, or at least what I felt, and it is the worst thing a human being can think on his deathbed.
One morning, wandering near the shelter, I lost consciousness due to excessive alcohol intoxication.
The next thing I remember is waking up with delirious and blurred images. I saw a face and a blue uniform, and I thought angels wore white. I began to hear vague voices and noises like a celebration.
It seemed like confusion to me.
Raising my head, I saw some people in white. Those are angels, I thought. Only that they were around a stretcher, it seemed that it was waiting for me, with a plastic bag where they put the dead.
Oh my God, I managed to say. And who do you think they are going to take there?
And I began to understand that the stretcher was for me.
My chest was sore when I tried to get up, and I saw next to me some electrical devices to wake the dead.
It seems the celebration was because they had been able to revive me.
Wow, what a situation I have put myself in.
The man dressed in blue was a uniformed policeman, checking my vitals and assuring me that I had reconciled consciousness.
Between flashes of light in my blurry eyes, I felt a torrent of almost visible thoughts come to me.
I saw my children with only a few tears coming from their eyes; surely they would be ashamed to say that their father died in the streets due to alcoholism.
And then I saw my mother suffering until she almost lost her breath crying out for her son, who died abandoned in the streets because of his destructive addictions.
And then a deep thought came to my mind about all my wasted life, as if I were going through a life screen.
And I saw the true root of my self-destruction that led me to ruin.
Lack of discipline led me to profound irresponsibility.
Wanting to feel pleasure is our body's natural reaction, but the continuous search for it only leads to debauchery.
That was what happened to me.
When, in my youth, I began to experiment with the pleasures of my body and increase them through alcohol and drugs, it only led me to enslave myself and lose love for actual life.
Like a stone rolling downhill, my entire life slipped away, running over everything in its path, including my loved ones.
In the end, I indulged in pleasures with an insatiable thirst.
And now I was waking up from death to realize that I had hurt myself and everyone who got in my way.
But it's never too late to start over again. And this was an excellent opportunity to realize if I would continue the same or change the course of my life.
I knew that I would have to roll the stone uphill, but when one reaches the ground, there is no other choice but to climb up because further down, I would only be digging my grave.
The effort I would have to make to roll the stone up the hill would be what I would have to do to eliminate all the addictions I had enslaved myself.
If I hesitated and the stone slipped away, it would be like a relapse. And I would have to start again to push from the bottom up.
But it's okay. If I keep trying to get to the top, that counts because if I quit, I already know what awaits me.
The bells that are going to toll for my funeral.
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If you know someone going through emotional problems who lacks control over addictive substances, that person may be on the brink of losing their home and falling into the abyss of homelessness and addictions. Please call a helpline.