The Debt That Doesn’t Exist
The thing I’ve carried the most guilt for in my entire life
is something I never chose.
Cancer.
The one thing I had absolutely zero control over —
and somehow it’s the thing I feel ashamed of.
And here’s the part nobody talks about:
When illness doesn’t kill you,
that’s when the real punishment starts.
Because dying?
People understand dying.
They clean out closets, close accounts, cry, heal, move on.
Life continues.
But surviving?
Surviving makes everyone hold their breath,
and suddenly you’re the reason they can’t relax.
You didn’t choose it.
But you still end up feeling like you disappointed everyone you love.
I joke with my wife sometimes — half serious, half not —
about her pulling the plug if I ever go into a coma again.
She hates it.
But she doesn’t know that during the first time,
there was a moment I honestly wished she would.
Not because I wanted to die,
but because I wanted the burden to be over for everyone else.
She hears the joke.
She doesn’t hear the truth inside it.
When you’re sick, you lose time — and you drag everyone with you.
Your partner carries fear.
Your kid carries confusion.
Your friends carry doubt.
You look around and see the suffering and think:
I did this.
I caused this.
If I weren’t here, they’d be free.
It’s irrational, but it’s real.
I used to love being the life of the party.
Or sitting quietly in the corner, just enjoying the room.
But during that time, I felt like all I did was suck the air out of it.
Not because of who I was —
but because of what was happening to me.
I didn’t dominate the room.
The illness did.
And now I’m on the other side of it,
and that’s where the next twist hits:
There’s no debt to pay…
but you feel like you owe everyone everything.
Constantly.
Like you need to make up for every day you weren’t fully present.
For every moment someone else had to worry.
For every ounce of strength they gave you
when you had none of your own.
And once you start moving again —
with purpose, with intensity, with clarity —
people think you’ve lost your mind.
They see the pace you’re working at and they get scared.
They think you’re manic, obsessed, unstable.
But they haven’t been where you’ve been.
They never had death whisper in their ear.
They’ve never woken up in a hospital bed
wondering if the world would be better off without them.
They don’t understand that when you survive something like that,
you come back with a fire under your feet
that makes everyone else’s normal pace look like sleepwalking.
They stroll.
You sprint.
You’re not trying to “pay back time.”
You’re trying to prove — to yourself —
that you deserved to stay.
You’re trying to prove your survival wasn’t a mistake.
That the time you cost everyone meant something.
That their fear wasn’t wasted.
And that’s the part no one sees.
They see movement and call it chaos.
They see urgency and call it instability.
They see drive and call it obsession.
But what you’re really doing
is living like someone who almost didn’t get the chance.
There’s no debt.
There never was.
Just a man who woke up
and refused to go back to sleep.
Fact check me.