Why do I feel like prey instead of a fighter facing cancer treatment?

I woke up at 3:40 a.m. Not because of a noise. Not because of a dream. But because cancer likes to remind you who’s in charge at hours when the world is too quiet to argue back. There’s something about the darkness that gives your brain permission to open all the doors you keep locked during the day. And tonight, mine kicked every one of them open. I lay there in bed staring at the ceiling—the same ceiling I’ve stared at a thousand times before, but that night it felt… thinner. Like everything above me was made of paper and the world outside was pressing its thumb into it, trying to get in. And for some reason, in that pitch-black half-conscious panic, I found myself thinking about apex predators. Real ones. The kind that roam jungles and swamps, not hospitals. It hit me like a punch: Cancer is the apex predator of the human world. The thing no one wants to acknowledge. The thing we pretend we’ve mastered but don’t understand. The thing that stalks from inside instead of the shadows. We humans walk around like we’re invincible, like we climbed to the top of the food chain and stayed there. We conquered sabertooths. We outran wildfires. We invented Wi-Fi, for God’s sake. But then cancer shows up, uninvited, silent, pissed off, and suddenly we’re reminded: We never stopped being prey. We just stopped wanting to admit it. And there I was at 3:40 a.m., realizing that tomorrow, Monday, I’d be marching into the hospital for a targeted imaging scan. A map. A blueprint. A “here’s where the monster lives” diagram. Because on top of everything else, cancer makes you a cartographer of your own body. And then there’s hormone therapy, which starts tomorrow as well—like some twisted initiation ritual. Day one of chemical manopause. Day one of shutting down the hormone that basically makes you you. I laughed in the dark. A short, breathless, cracked laugh. Because what else do you do? How absolutely ridiculous is it that the best weapons science has handed us for fighting the apex predator include: blasting it with radiation beams poisoning it with chemicals and turning off testosterone like it’s a faulty breaker switch This is what we’ve got. This is humanity’s arsenal. And we’re supposed to pretend we’re not terrified? But here’s the real punch: Even doctors admit it, we don’t really know much about cancer. Not in the grand scheme. Not compared to what it’s capable of. We know how to treat it. Sometimes. We know how to buy time. Sometimes. We know how to shrink it, burn it, slice it out. But understand it? Not even close. We’re standing in the jungle holding a flashlight and a pocketknife while a creature we can barely see circles us. And yet… tomorrow I’ll still walk into that hospital. On time. Sober. Scared. Determined. Ready in the way a man can only be when he doesn’t have another option. That’s what they don’t tell you about this fight: You don’t feel brave. Not once. Not for a second. You feel hunted. Exposed. Unprepared. Like prey that’s pretending to be a predator because everyone keeps telling you to “stay strong.” Here’s the truth no one says out loud: Strength isn’t loud. It isn’t heroic. It isn’t cinematic. Sometimes strength is just lying awake at 3:40 a.m. feeling the weight of tomorrow pressing on your chest, and still deciding to show up anyway. Sometimes it’s letting yourself be terrified. And then getting in the car at 7 a.m. and going to the appointment even though every part of your brain is screaming to run. The apex predator wants silence. Isolation. Shame. It wants you small. But humans? We’re stubborn bastards. We’ll fight something we don’t understand with weapons we barely trust, because the alternative is lying down and letting it have us. And that’s not happening. Not without a war. So I’ll face tomorrow. Hormones, radiation, scans, all of it. Not because I’m brave but because I’m too damn alive to give this thing the satisfaction. Let the apex predator circle. I’m circling back. This isn’t the chapter where I win. This is the chapter where I get up at 3:40 a.m., stare into the dark, and decide: Not today.