Day 40: Intrusive Me

February 16, 2025

Intrusive Me

Cancer has not just invaded my body—it has invaded my mind. It has created a second version of me, an intrusive me, a shadow that lingers, whispering doubts even in my strongest moments.

This intrusive me creeps into the quiet, into the in-between spaces where doubt finds room to breathe. It tells me I am small. It tells me I am fragile. It tells me I am just another body for it to consume, just another name in its long, merciless history.

It is relentless.

It makes me overanalyze every ache, every twinge of fatigue, twisting them into signs of weakness. It makes me stare too long in the mirror, searching for changes, for proof that I am fading. It loops the same questions over and over, the ones I try to push away but can never quite escape.

Will I still be strong enough for my family?

Will my boys remember me as the dad who played, laughed, and told stories—or just the dad who was sick?

Will Maria look at me the same way, or will she see someone different, someone broken?

How much of me will still be left when this fight is over?

Cancer tries to shrink my world, to make it all about itself. It wants to define me, to strip away everything else, to turn my name into nothing more than a diagnosis.

But I refuse.

Because even though intrusive me is loud, I am louder.

Yes, cancer is in my life. Yes, it is a fight I must face.

But it is not who I am.

I am still a father, a husband, a storyteller.

I am still the same man who dreams, who creates, who loves fiercely.

I am not just a patient.

I am a warrior.

And I will not let the intrusive me win.

I Am the Storm

Cancer is used to winning. It sneaks in silently, takes root, and believes it owns the body it has invaded. It thinks it will dictate the terms of this fight. That I will simply endure, that I will bow under the weight of fear, uncertainty, and pain.

It is wrong.

I do not sit and wait for the storm.

I am the storm.

I embrace the storm, letting its fury ignite my strength, because deep within me, the storm already rages.

I am the thunder that shakes the walls of doubt.

I am the tree in the wind that refuses to break, bending but never snapping.

I am the wildfire that refuses to be extinguished, consuming every obstacle in my path, growing stronger with every challenge thrown my way.

I am the mountain that stands unshaken, unmovable against the elements that try to wear me down.

Cancer does not own me. It does not control my story. It does not get the final word.

Yes, it will try to take from me—my strength, my energy, my time. But I will give it nothing freely.

Every ounce of power it tries to steal, I will take back tenfold.

Every moment of doubt, I will answer with defiance.

Every whisper of fear, I will drown out with the roar of my will.

Because I do not fight alone.

I Do Not Fight Alone

The storm is not just mine. It does not rage in isolation.

I walk this path with an army at my side.

Maria, my love, my anchor, my unwavering force. She stands beside me, not because she has to, but because we are in this together. Because she has never been one to back down from a storm either.

Ethan, Gabriel, and Noah—my boys, my heart, my reason to fight with everything I have. They are watching, learning what resilience looks like, what it means to stand unshaken in the face of adversity.

My family, my friends—those who have wrapped me in strength when I felt weak. Who have lifted me up in moments when the weight felt too much.

The prayer warriors, the ones whose faith fills the spaces where fear tries to settle. Their words rise like battle cries, like war drums pounding against the darkness, reminding me that I am never alone in this fight.

The doctors, the nurses, the ones wielding knowledge and science as weapons against this enemy. Their hands steady, their purpose clear. They are soldiers in this war, and I trust them to guide me through the battlefield.

Together, we are the storm.

Together, we are the force cancer never saw coming.

What Comes After

One day, this battle will end.

One day, I will wake up, and cancer will not be the first thought in my mind.

One day, I will look back on this fight—not as something that broke me, but as something that built me.

I do not know exactly what version of myself will emerge from this war, but I know I will not be the same man who walked into it.

I will be someone who has stood at the edge of fear and refused to fall.

I will be someone who understands the weight of time differently, who no longer takes a single moment for granted.

I will be a father who teaches his sons not just with words but with action—who shows them that strength is not about never falling, but about standing back up, again and again, no matter how many times life tries to knock you down.

I will be a husband who loves even deeper, who cherishes Maria in a way I never knew was possible, because we have faced the darkest of storms and still stood together.

I will be a storyteller with more to say, with stories shaped not just by imagination, but by experience. Someone who can look at others struggling and say, I know what it feels like to be lost in the dark. But I also know how to find my way back to the light.

This will not break me.

It will forge me.

The Fight Continues

Cancer whispers.

It tries to make me doubt. To make me afraid. To make me question whether I am strong enough for this.

But I roar back.

I am strong enough.

I am the storm.

And no matter what tomorrow brings, no matter how many days this fight lasts, I am still here.

I am still me.

And I am not done.

As the poet William Ernest Henley wrote in Invictus:

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.”

This fight does not own me.

Cancer does not own me.

I am the master of my fate.

I am the captain of my soul.

I am the storm. Hear me roar.

Tomorrow is a new beginning, with the start of my chemotherapy. I look forward to starting the next chapter in this story, the one when we fight back.