Steve Pake ✝️ (@spakeboldly)

10 years out from Testicular Cancer, my biggest fear continues to be a late recurrence of my first cancer, or developing a second. And I'm not even really afraid anymore, it's just something that I've fully accepted could happen. It's easier that way, to accept death and dying, and to then just get on with your life and enjoy each day as best you can. Once in awhile I might have a nightmare about it, but the last time that happened I actually felt at peace with it all and knowingly accepted it. It was everyone else around me that was upset, and that I was consoling as I was dying, perhaps predicting the future at some point. As far as COVID goes, we have immune systems that will actually work on that, unlike with cancer. I burned myself into the ground with the fears of cancer recurrences and all sorts of other things relating to that a long time ago now. I just can't be afraid like I used to be, and certainly not of COVID. It's a virus. You can't stop it. We're all probably going to get it at some point, and most of us won't even know we've had it! Yet all I see around me are people ruled by fear, afraid to walk in the middle of the woods without an NPC standard issue blue mask on, afraid to get a haircut, afraid to leave their homes, afraid to eat in a restaurant, afraid to go anywhere or do anything, and literally afraid to live their lives and the "hiding behind the couch meme." The conditioning is sickening. I'm just here to say that people can break free of this whenever THEY are ready to. We can't control what happens to us, only how we respond. You can keep being afraid as long as you want to. You can also STOP being afraid whenever you're ready. Eventually you just get tired of being afraid as I did at one point, and it's all uphill from there. #randomthoughts #cancersurvivorproblems