a two year time warp

It’s been a long time since I journaled. I need it more than ever, but it has been hard to journal. When journaling that means accepting reality, the means saying aloud, “I’m not okay.” “Cancer fucked not only with my life but my family’s life.” It brings up so much anger, sadness, grief, confusion, appreciation, gratitude, fear. Pretty much, any emotion you think of, is thrown into this tornado that is bulldozing my foundation of what once was, is no longer. I feel like that tornado is still bulldozing, I don’t feel as if I’m in the restructuring phase yet. No body likes to talk about the bulldozing phase. Those aren’t topic of conversations that come up in gatherings because it’s the heavy topics that elicits heavy emotions from everyone in the room. But it is a phase we should do not keep to ourselves. A phase that needs to be shared.

Why am I sharing now? Because I am breaking and I need to let my guilt free. I hold guilt for not responding back to text messages, not connecting with people, guilt for not being the person I once was. I need to let it go and grieve. I am not the person I once was. My essence might still be there, but I am different and I need to accept that. I feel like I’m the metamorphis phase of a catepillar becoming a butterfly. Once again, this phase is not talked much about. We always focus on the catepillar and then the butterfly, but forget to talk about what the creature had to endure to go from a catepillar to a butterfly. Maybe one day, I’ll write a poem about this.

Frank Anderson, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, wrote this post this morning:

I was not ready for the impact cancer was going to have on myself and on my family. I was not ready for the emotional toll. I thought we made it through. We did make it through. But now our bodies need to recover. I wasn’t ready for the recovery phase and the time it takes to recover, not only for myself, but for my family as well. *I also got Covid in August 2025, and I felt like Covid just kicked me while I was on the ground and I haven’t been able to get back up since then.

I don’t know where I got this quote from, or how accurate it is, but it spoke to me and drove something inside of me. “Psychology says the people who become genuinely better through hardships aren’t the ones who stayed positive and found the silver lining, they’re the ones who let it break something honest in them, sat in the rubble for longer than was comfortable, and rebuilt with fewer rooms but stronger walls.”

So that is where I’m at right now. I’m letting cancer break me and I’m sitting in the rubble and when I’m ready, I’m going to rebuild.

This next part is for me, to document this process of exploring how cancer is breaking me. I created this a couple weeks ago.

It was here, when I noticed, I wasn’t connecting myself to my story. Instead of using 1st person, I was using 2nd person. My goal since that day, is to connect myself to my story and use the word, “I.”

This is the area where I need to make more space for my self and process the “what was” to “what is.” The way I view life has shifted. My morals and values are still intact, but how I live day to day has shifted. It feels so wabbly. Systems that I once looked towards for grounding, I’m now questioning the why behind them. Everything feels off kilter.

This one breaks me the most. This is the hardest one to live with. Fact for my family - cancer dysregulated us. I don’t think there is anything we could have done to avoid it, it just comes with the territory. I’m furious and heart broken that it has affected Javi the way that it has. I was unable to shield him from this. At times I feel like I failed. I’m working on accepting this as the natural consequence of me getting cancer, not me being a failure as a mom. It is out of my control and out of my family’s control. Emotions are big in the Delgado household right now, even Millie is feeling it (our dog). I feel like we are in a place where we are all breaking and now we are sitting in the rubble. I’m grateful Javi asked if he could see a therapist. I feel like his therapist is a godsend and she is going to be instrumental in helping us rebuild together as a family. I’m hoping she becomes our lightning rod that we do desperately need.

And now, for the first time in three weeks, I feel like I am ready to break these mother fuckers. I feel like I’m ready to break and sit in the rubble. Accept that I’m still in recovery. Accept my new rebuild. It will be different, it will be unfamiliar, it will be uncomfortable at first, but it will still be me. My interests, hobbies, and day to day activities will shift, but as Antonio told me at the beginning, cancer won’t take my essence away. Right now, my essence feels dimmed, and hopefully, as I rebuild, it will begin to shine again.