I am my god

By Pedro Campos

I am my god is a captivating, inspiring, and thrilling autobiography.
It addresses how to understand and heal from cancer, that true inner battle, that journey to the center of one's own hell, to face one's own demons.
A story of overcoming, of a life ,of sport, a test of courage, a handbook regarding the philosophy of life.
After deciding to get to the very edge of death, to expose his life so that everything that had to die in him may die, until hearing his diagnosis and 24 hours later, knowing that he was cured and feeling like the happiest man in the world, the protagonist narrates in the first person this story that will leave the reader with the certainty that everything is possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abrapalabra Editorial
• Release date: Mar 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9786316594099

Book preview

I-am-my-god_Pedro-Campos.jpg

Pedro Campos

I am my god

About my life, my hell,

cancer and my birth

Campos, Pedro

I am my god / Pedro Campos. -

1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires :

Abrapalabra Editorial, 2024.

Libro digital, EPUB

Archivo Digital: descarga y online

ISBN 978-631-6594-09-9

1. Autobiografías. I. Título.

CDD 808.883

Translation:

Horacio Andrés Castelli

Cover image:

Hector Perrone

First edition: March, 2024

Layout:

Abrapalabra Editorial

Buenos Aires

E-mail: [e-mail]

www.abrapalabraeditorial.com

ISBN: 978-631-6594-09-9

Made the deposit indicated by law 11,723

Made in Argentina

Gratitude

To my son Augusto, my hero.

To my children Julia and Martín,

to Laura, to my dad and mom,

to Silvina, to Norberto, to José, to Fedra,

my daughter at heart, to my dear friends,

to all the people who were and are in my life,

to Melina.

Atheist, spiritual and triathlete

Prologue

I was very honored to be invited to write the prologue for this book, which portrays in a fully experiential way, in the deepest sense of the word, a transit of stages with an outcome that, in addition to being positive, has signs of a deep internal revolution and a new way of living life.

Pedro, like other people who crossed and cross my path, who comes and goes and who continues, not only because of persistence but also because of a feeling of gratitude mixed with unrestricted confidence in continuing and in glimpsing, understands that in addition to everything he achieved and perceived, more is always possible, following our will and predestination.

Everything I do, I do with love and dedication, seeing it as more than a job, a spiritual mission to serve life and revolutionize the lives of people in their processes to awaken consciousness.

Pedro’s story is moving and stimulating, and may provide hope for other people, who, like him, will be able to feel in their skin and their guts, the greatest, perhaps, of all of life’s challenges, which is not only to overcome death, but rather to understand what life means, and the way one transcends and understands that process as something in fact liberating.

I feel part of that important journey in the life of someone like Pedro, who portrays his innermost intimate experiences in a book, recounting the events in their different stages.

I know for certain that the Pedro I knew is totally different from the Pedro of today. All of his transformations were based on the principles that Yoga portrays in its spiritual literature. Principles such as confidence that everything is possible, unrestricted dedication to change and what it entails in our lives, commitment, and discipline, among others.

His imminent life-threatening situation, the grieving process, and the internal transformations that would cause many to succumb to chaos and imbalances, always remained far from Pedro’s purpose.

Ever since we started serious work in favor of his health, in the broadest sense of the word, beyond the physical order, it was always seen and treated as the possibility of overcoming challenges, and that is what life represents.

When we overcome challenges, we feel liberated from our restraints and limitations, and we subtly understand the essential values of life, such as honor, humility, and honesty, and that the more faithful we are to our feelings, the closer we come to the transcendent truth; without any kind of judgment, blame or denial.

I know that many people, and I include myself in this story, were part of the transformation of a victor in his challenging days, as was Pedro’s case.

Everyone will have the opportunity, by reading this book, to bring to their own reality, regardless of what it may be, whether it is the case of a similar ailment, or about the questions and challenges of life, and benefit from this story to help them overcome those challenges as well.

Living wholly implies much more than breathing, keeping our daily tasks under control, or fulfilling our dreams or desires, but learning from our challenges, that is what makes us different, that we can be living or dying every minute that passes and that we can transform, change, simply overcome, understanding that we are not people but soul, and that it is by its own nature free.

Admitting that we are soul above all else, re-educates us and gives new meaning to all the patterns imprinted in our mind, which insist on attending only to those limitations, without the possibility of awakening and realizing a life of well-being, harmony, love, peace, and happiness.

My most sincere thanks to Pedro and to all the people who, by being beside him, praying, with their strength, or in silence, have shown their affection and love for his heroic story, which is now presented in the form of a book that records a literary story, its authorship.

May this book be a new beginning of life, full of blessings, prosperity, and help to others who can benefit from this noble task.

Shri Swami Shankara Sarawati,

Sergio Oliveira, Caxias do Sul, RS, Brasil

I am my god

On August 28, 2018, the head of Hematology at Hospital San Martin, sitting on a chair and looking into my eyes, told me I had cancer and explained what the treatment was going to be. I processed the news for 24 hours and, after that, I knew I was cured. Knowing I had cancer ended my hell. The fact that I had this disease gave me the certainty that everything had definitely changed and that I was going to start living my own life.

I will try to tell everything, from the moment I was conceived until my birth, at the age of fifty-one.



It’s a rainy morning, I’m still in bed feeling sleepy, which I do not intend to resist, by the way. From the kitchen comes the smell of fresh coffee.

I’m at the Ponta das Pedras inn, in Morro do São Paulo, Itacaré island, Brazil. In this place, over two years ago, my illness began to manifest itself more intensely. My spleen started to swell, as did my ankles, due to the lymphoma.

I came back to close pending matters, to finally let others go, and to live moments wholly, which due to my physical problems, I was unable to do at the time. There is a lot of symbolism here, in this wonderful and singular place. At the northern end of the island, at its highest point, stands, almost majestic, the lighthouse. It’s called ‘el farol’, meaning the streetlight. It has a lot to do with my new life, it has a very special meaning. It is a challenge, something pending. I will elaborate on why soon.

It rains on.



I was locked in a cage, with a hungry lion and with just a dull and worn-out knife to defend myself. Not only did I kill the lion, but I managed the most difficult thing - to open the cage.

That is why, when I’m asked how I managed to go to the gym in the afternoon after my morning chemo, I reply that cancer and the treatment were a party to me. I was already lying under the sun, my real hell was behind me. That dark tunnel that never ended, that anguish of not knowing, of not understanding, of thinking that I had gone crazy, was necessary. Amid all that martyrdom, of all that madness with no apparent end, I knew only one thing, and that was that if I stopped confronting it, I would die. Those twenty-four hours following my diagnosis taught me everything. I was able to understand and answer the questions I was constantly asking myself. I had been told that I had cancer, that the only treatment was chemotherapy, and that a person with the values I had in my blood at that time could not be alive. Nevertheless, I did not feel fear, I did not feel anguish, I did not wonder why it had happened to me. No, none of that. From the moment I heard my diagnosis, I knew I was healed because my soul was at peace, I had healed my true affliction. I understood.

I declare myself incapable of describing how I feel about the people who did everything in their power to make it possible for me to be writing this today, especially my son Augusto. Gratitude? To thank every one of them? No, that doesn’t do it justice, that doesn’t begin to describe it.



One day, I called Ricardo. I had not been feeling well for a long time, but beyond the biological disease that I already had, and that I felt, and did not know what it was, my life was broken. I knew I could not go on like that. I knew and felt that the time had come to face and decide whether I wanted to go on living or die. I did not consciously know what I had to do, I did not consciously understand which path to follow, but I knew that something had to change.

Ricardo saw me, and I told him what was happening to me. An anemia that won’t go away, I told him. He then explained to me that it was a problem concerning my family, a problem within the family bosom. There’s a problem in your blood, he told me, and blood is family. He asked me what happened to me in the middle of my life. I thought for a second. My grandfather on my mom’s side committed suicide, I said.

After that, he gave me an appointment. When the day came, we sat face to face and then began the most difficult part, the darkest and most bitter part of this and the many other lives I got to live.

In that first session, the punches began to rain down. They came from all sides, almost always from where I least expected them. Of course, we weren’t fighting, but words and their meaning are much more painful than any punch dealt using knuckles.

I began to realize what my life had really been like, who and how those around me had been and are since I was conceived, and fundamentally, why things had not been the way I thought they had. I started to be conscious of how I had been raised, how I had been taught not to be myself and, little by little, to become someone insecure, full of fears, and terrified of living his own life. I began to relate states of mind, conflictive situations within me, and ways in which I had reacted in certain circumstances. It was the way I began to realize what I had lived through and in the family I had chosen to be born into.

The patterns of behavior of all of us have been fixed and predetermined for at least four or five generations. If we believe that the way we react and relate to others is our own, we are completely wrong. To be aware of this is to take a giant step to begin to live our own life. Otherwise, there is no chance of that. With Ricardo, I realized that my life had been marked by suffocation. My life was suffocation.

My mom, executing her ancestral programming and complying with the mandates of generations ago, did nothing more than make a prison out of my life, a cage, in which she believed she was protecting me from the very life I was to live. She thought she was helping me, she thought she was doing the best job of the best mom, not realizing that she was locking me in a little more every day. She didn’t let me breathe. Several times, while she was alive, I came to think about how much better my life would be without my mom.

Much the same happened with my father, about whom I never knew too much. My dad died and I never knew what he really thought, I never knew what he felt about his life, about what he had to live, about his sorrows, his anguish, or the things that made him happy. Apart from shouting the goals of our favorite teams, I never really knew who he was.



I had a happy childhood, I have beautiful memories of going to the kindergarten that was three blocks away from my house and next to what would be my elementary school. Several of my friends today date back from then. They are dear to me, and fill an important part of my life. Over time, I shared many beautiful moments with them, and I still share emotions with them today, as I did back then. Friends who, moreover, helped greatly to save my life when it seemed that I was refusing to do so.

In those years I felt that I had a sense of leadership among my group and my elementary school memories are mainly those of a boy who played at being the boss, who was followed and respected. I felt I was a leader.

It was in that school, my School No. 1, where I learned to love sport, where I began to understand that my life was going to be marked by it, that my passion was awakening and would never end. And I have to say that the great architect of that, the person who made my inner fire ignite and develop the way it did and last until today, was the incomparable mentor of life, whom I keep in the bottom of my heart, Professor Don Héctor Paterlini. I evoke him and the emotion springs spontaneously from my heart, passes through my throat, and ends with sweet tears in my eyes. What a formidable being, what a wonderful person and friend! He had a unique talent to always bring out the best in everyone, a wise man who convinced you that every jump, every move, every run, and every strike at the ball had to be from the heart. That’s how he conveyed what he taught, with his heart. He is an eternal inspiration for me.



This was also a stage of travels, which were adventures filled with nature and feelings. The four of us would travel, my parents, my sister, and myself. They were camping trips, trips that would turn into stories to tell and remember, travels with which I learned to love the immense landscape filling my eyes and heart, travels that will never end because they were engraved into my soul forever. That too is forever in my life.

We got to know a great part of the country that way, discovering colors, and smells, feeling the wind, the heat and cold in our skin. To rub one’s fingers on some plant and feel its smell, to wake up to the singing of birds and deep nature all around me, enchanting me… Incredible feelings that I learnt to value and experience at a very early age.

Several times I described in a very particular way the feeling that invaded me, and invades me still, whenever I contemplate something that marveled me in nature. Those whole and exciting moments when I was in front of something beautiful, I used to say that what I was living made me suffer. I suffer, I suffer, I would say. I believe with that expression I intended to declare my impotence of not being able to be part of it, of not being able to have it and make it my own, but I didn’t understand that I was able and that I was also that. We are all that.



Kindergarten, elementary, and high school were places that meant friendship, beautiful moments, emotions, and many teachings for me. I have countless anecdotes and experiences from that time. I remember the moments, smells, tones of voice, attitudes, and phrases of my friends, classmates, and teachers. Many things and situations seem vivid as if they were happening today, including what I felt and experienced. Even today, when we have the opportunity to share whole moments among friends, I am still able to tell a story in great detail or impersonate teachers and professors who have earned my attention for that purpose.

As I mentioned, elementary school was the beginning of my life related to sports, to my passion for sports, which accompanies me until today, and I know it will be so forever.

I think that besides representing friendship, elementary school marks a milestone for my love of sports. It was born there and I am grateful to life for having come across such a wonderful and unique person as Héctor Paterlini was to me.



I have beautiful memories and experiences from that elementary school, but there is one in particular that I remember with the greatest emotion.

It was the end of the year ceremony, although I don’t remember which, and I was performing. I played the role of the circus presenter. I was the one who opened the show for the audience in attendance, who built the expectation for what was about to come. And, among the audience, among all the dads, moms, grandmoms, grandpas, aunts, and uncles, there was him, my idol, my reference, my maternal grandfather, Grandpa Tatán. I spoke and everyone listened, I moved my arms, my eyes were filled with emotion and everyone was at the edge of their seats, but I, at that moment, up on that stage, was acting just for him. He had my attention, he drew my stare, my movements, and my emotion, and his face and his eyes reflected his own. I need not close my eyes to see him standing there among everyone, craning his neck to get a better view, with his smile and his sweet tears of pride and love, the same ones that come to my eyes now as I write and feel him with me. My grandfather, my permanent guide.



Grandpa Tatán and Grandma Tatána.

A grapevine covered a considerable portion of the yard, a part that was brick-floored and had a gutter that served as a river to play with plastic and wooden little ships. It was the drain from a basin fed from the water tank on the roof. Beyond the pillar began the open yard, an immense piece of land where I spent a lot of time playing and learning; an orchard with vegetables, a hen pen, fruit trees, and a bird of paradise bush which was my haven and an exclusive zone for me and my fantasies.

There was a lot of magic there, and I needed nothing else to feel like I was in the best place in the world. To treat myself to a sweet and tender tomato from the plant was one of the greatest pleasures I could have, as was walking among the chicory, squash and all else that grew with the care of my grandparents. There was also a shed on one side, where my grandfather kept all his tools and anything else that might be useful.

He was always doing something, fixing or making something that was necessary for something. They were both untiring and that’s why I called them that, because there was always the sound of work in the air, there was always activity and the ta-tan of the hammer or any other sound meaning action. Of course, there was also the mate break in the shade and the happy chats. My whole childhood was like that. I lived and shared a lot with my grandparents and learned plenty and more from them.

Uncle Manolo and aunt Chola, Bernabé and Paula, uncle Agustín and aunt Herminia, aunt Pancha and Ramon. All of them are a part of my life, of this wonderful life I lead and with which I’m getting along better and better. All of them compose whole moments, moments I can remember and relive as if they were happening right now and are treasures that will be with me forever, and from which I still learn today.

My grandma Inés died young, when I was fifteen years old. The Soccer World Cup was being played in Spain, in 1982. She had an autoimmune disease that progressively stripped her of her forces and ended her life as she lay asleep on her bed.

My grandfather never recovered from that, and he carried it for the rest of his life with ups and downs. He was lonely after my grandma’s death, despite having us beside him. My parents, my sister Laura, and myself lived next door, so it was almost like we were all living together. The backyards were the same because nothing was there to separate them and it was all the same space.

A long time afterward, when my son Augusto was already ten months old, my grandfather Pedro, Grandpa Tatán, and Grandpa Pico, decided he didn’t want to live anymore.

Twelve years after my grandma’s death, on the afternoon of December 29th, he woke up from his nap, went to the bathroom, waved at me, and killed himself.

I was in a room in his house doing some chores, which I was almost about to finish, when he opened the door, and, leaning on the door frame, asked me how I was doing. What’s up, nenito?. I turned around and answered that all was well, that it was odd that he was up so early from his nap and, while I waited for his response, I went back to my checklist. It was then that he told me that he was doing bad, bad, bad and that he was going to off himself.

It was the first time in my life that I would feel my whole spine freeze up in one second. No one is prepared for that, let alone me.

I tried to lessen the importance of what I had heard, but I couldn’t come out of shock, and I started talking to him, telling him to get dressed, to get the mate ready and go home, sit, and have a few with my mom.

My mind was set on not realizing the gravity of what was happening, so I decided to finish what I was doing and let him go back to his room. After a few moments, I heard the noise of a chair on the other side of the wall, but I preferred to imagine that it had his clothes on it and that he was getting dressed. I kept trying to understand and it was only after a couple of minutes that I left the room where I was, walked a few meters across the yard, and put my hands against the glass on the door to peep inside, wishing to see him putting the water on. But that is not what I saw.

From where I was I could see up a hallway separating the house’s two rooms, and it took me a couple of seconds to react and realize that the person I saw hanging from a rope, in his underwear, was my grandfather.

Following my screams, came my parents. We joined efforts and were able to cut him down, we laid him on his bed and my mom started to massage his throat and his face, which was swollen and purple. I tried CPR, but nothing could bring him back. It was too late, he was already dead.

From the moment he opened the door and said ‘What’s up, nenito?’, as he always called me, his mind was made