I have been on a roller coaster since July 6th, when my world fell apart and my boyfriend was diagnosed was stage II lymphoma. He endured his first chemo treatment on July 17th, and on July 18th he texted me saying he wanted to break up with me because he wanted to keep me from suffering and the pain that was going to come with his illness. Then he changed his mind, asked for me to come back, told me our relationship status didn’t matter and that he just wants me there for him whether it be as a girlfriend or a friend. Yet, after that first chemo treatment, everything changed. No longer did we get to see each other daily, instead it was him recovering from treatment and working once a week or so or stopping by for 10 minutes to say hello. The pain from side effects began to creep in hindering him unable to walk, and depression crept in. The thing about X is this: his worth as a man is how he is able to provide. He was raised with the machismo mindset, where the man is the provider and the woman is the caretaker. Knowing he is losing his value as a man, being rendered useless from illness has made him reclusive. He’s losing himself to illness.
Today, I lost him. His depression and anger once again forced him to withdraw and he pushed me away when he got the call informing him his cancer went from stage 2 to 3. One step forward, five steps back. A man who has so much to give, so much to live for is having to be knocked down to being a man trapped in a ticking time bomb. There is no future, that I accepted. I care about him so much that all I wanted was to be able to be there for him, to support him whether that be in a hospital or his home but he refused to let me in. I had a feeling it was going to happen when he blew me off three days in a row without so much as a call and his texts became less and his sleep became more. It terrifies me because I am relieved but at the same time I am sad. People would look at the length of our relationship and say “Who cares? You dodged a bullet. It was only two months!” But when he has been a friend for almost a year, when we both went through heart break and healed and found each other for some reason our souls just connected. He did it because he didn’t want to ruin what was pure, the relationship we had when it was good. I hate thinking how much things changed in 8 short weeks..how we were so happy..and now we are both suffering from a terrible disease.
Life is short, and when you have to live in the reality of it, it is terrifying. For the past month of him going for treatment I lived in fear waiting for a phone call from his mom with bad news. Now I don’t have that fear, but it’s even worse because I would rather get the phone call than find out through word of mouth.Â
Cancer patients, please, just listen to my words: there are a lot of people in this world who would hear your diagnoses and they would run in the opposite direction. However, if you find the rare gem that is trying to give you their strength to help you fight, don’t turn them away. Take the love and the strength and the support and allow yourself to be fulfilled in it in case it is the end of your journey. Don’t push those who care about you away, because it only is going to make them go through life wondering “what if” or “what could’ve been.”Â
 Love comes in so many shapes and sizes, you love and you lose you move on and you heal and then love again. There’s so many different kinds of love to give and receive, allow yourself the opportunity, take the risk. Do I regret any minute? No. I would do it again, and I know if I ever were to get a call in the middle of the night from him saying he needs me I’d be there as fast as I can.
Cancer is awful. It destroys the one it embodies and everything around it. It turns beautiful souls into dark shells of their former selves. It doesn’t just eat the cells in your body, it corrupts your mind if you allow it. Always look towards the light when the darkness comes. Always hold on to those who radiate the light that can end your darkness. You aren’t alone.
1a : Â change of physical form, structure, or substance especially by supernatural means b : Â a striking alteration in appearance, character, or circumstances
This blog has been a long time coming, and I am finally ready to sit back and openly talk about everything that has gone on in my life in the past year.Â
It is no secret that I have changed. I am different now than I was a year ago, both mentally and physically which is why I feel as if my life has undergone a metamorphosis.
Part 1: Relationships Fail, and that’s okay!
In June 2015, Michael and I separated for the first time. We had a lot of stress on our relationship at the time due to our living conditions: my cousin and her ex-fiancee had a very aggressive great dane that they did not neuter nor care for responsibly resulting in me being physically attacked twice and being charged at a third time. The first time I let it slide because I thought he was trying to be a puppy and play, but the second time is when shit got rough. My living conditions were like this: Michael and I lived in a one bedroom closed studio type apartment, while my cousin and her then fiance lived downstairs until they called things off and she moved back home. Michael and I would enter the basement through an outdoor back door to do our laundry as an agreement we made upon moving in. When they first got the great dane, the dog would constantly shit in the neighbors yard so my neighbor had enough and convinced our landlord to build a fence around the perimeter of the house and yard so the dog could run free. One morning without thinking anything of it I went in the basement to do laundry. Between me doing laundry and coming upstairs the ex-fiance came home and let the dog out. The dog charged me, tried knocking me down from behind and was aiming for my neck. I held my ground and used the laundry basket I had to push the dog away, and began screaming and punching the dog in order to stun him until I reached the locked gate to get away. I informed animal control which was pointless and made a point to be immature but also an asshole and call her out on social media for being a shit dog owner who never took the time to train the dog or take him for walks resulting in him being more aggressive than usual. Because of this, my whole family turned against me aside from my cousin Mikey. My family retaliated by going on Facebook and announcing that I was a liar and a bitch and deserved to be bitten by the dog. I haven’t talked to them since.
However, this ordeal put stress on us living over the ex-fiance and that stupid dog. We endured many sleepless nights listening to the dog howl because the owner would leave him locked in a small room the basement. We dealt with the neighbor pounding and listening to loud music in order to drive us away. The worst of it all was Michael didn’t have my back in the situation, he was too afraid of confrontation and didn’t want to stick up for me when I was charged by the dog for a third and final time. This led to trust issues between us, and also put the stress of me putting my foot down and telling him it was time for us to find a new apartment because I was tired of living in fear and feeling like I walked on eggshells in my home.
We found an apartment in New London, but after signing the lease and paying the deposit we both felt uneasy with the place because the apartment was on the third floor, kinda like an attic apartment, and we worried about fire risks even though we had safety exits. He felt like we rushed and I agreed, so thankfully the landlady was nice enough to refund us our deposit. We continued our search for about a month and a half when a miracle fell in our laps at the end of May of 2015. A friend of his referred us to a friend looking for someone to rent her one bedroom house. The only stipulation was we had to put all of our stuff in storage for 6 months until she was sure we wouldn’t move out, so she could pack her stuff and move to her son in California. The house was everything I wanted: small and quirky, all the utilities minus the oil heat were included. We had a back yard and a deck. It was in a quiet neighborhood in Pawcatuck, close to the border of RI. I fell in love with the house and could see us having a future there, but right after we made an agreement to move in on July 1st, things fell apart. He didn’t feel like the house was right, he felt trapped in our relationship because we were carpooling to work together and that burden was starting to get to him. My job was becoming poisonous to me as a person and was sucking the life out of me, therefore seeping out and affecting him as well. I wasn’t happy and was eager for a new start thinking that would help resolve our issues, but instead he decided to end things 15 days before we had to be out of our apartment. Thankfully he continued to live out the end of the lease with me and helped me pack, but we also ended up resolving our issues as we packed and prepared to move back home, a huge terrifying adjustment I didn’t want to make but I did my best to stay optimistic that this was where I needed to be in life. The hardest thing I did and still do is have to adjust to sleeping in bed by myself every night, because after 5 years of having someone be there for me, even sleeping, was terrifying. When you share a bed with someone you may get annoyed by their snoring or sleeping habits, but when you sleep in a queen bed by yourself the world seems like a much lonelier place because you can’t reach out and be reassured you aren’t alone in the world anymore.
After we moved back home things were better for a few months. We were rebuilding and reconnecting. I wasn’t working at my toxic job as much anymore and it was making me much happier to be there less frequently. He would visit me and stay the night so we could continue trying to keep our relationship alive. In all honesty, it was never the same, a part of me sees now that we were just the shells of our former selves hanging on by a thread. Eventually we had a curve ball thrown at us when my landlord who lived in the duplex next door caught wind Michael and I were still dating because my grandma told him the honest reason why I had moved back home. My landlord got in the middle of my relationship by telling my grandmother Michael could only spend one night a week and if he spent any more nights he had to pay $75 a night after that. Anytime Michael was over he would be extremely rude and aggressive towards my grandmother or him, making us all walk on eggshells in the house. It was harder going from being able to see him when I could to having a complete stranger scrutinize and meddle in our relationship. Not soon after my grandma was informed the landlord was selling our house and we had to be out byJune of 2016. Around this time Michael and I were talking about moving forward together again, this time taking the opportunity to move out of Connecticut and somewhere else because we had nothing holding us down and nothing holding us back. New Year’s Eve was real talk. I gave him options for us to move forward, either by staying here in CT or moving out of state. Once again the fight or flight reflexes kicked in and he pushed me away before finally coming over and ending things. When you get to the point on the relationship where you know that it is at the end and you are prepared, it isn’t so hard, or at least that is what I told myself.Â
In all honesty, it was fucking hell.
There was no fixing things this time. There was nothing left to resolve, nothing left to mend. I have relived that night over and over so many times in my head that it is like a movie. It came to the point I had to purge him from constantly being on my mind, which is when I turned to meditation because I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I went through the motions like a zombie because I had no one to turn to because no one could relate to what I was feeling. I begged, I cried, I pleaded. I went through all the stages of grief before finally coming to the final phase of acceptance. I threw myself into schoolwork and exercise as a way to rebuild myself. Even though it is probably one of the dumbest decisions I’ve made, I refused to completely shut him out of my life because I couldn’t do it on my own. Just having his friendship was enough to keep me sane, and we grew from that, yet a part of me hoped we would be able to get back together once we moved from the old house..
5 months I waited, 5 months I hoped he would notice how much I still loved and cared for him, but I also knew if I showed him I was still willing to hold on with no hope it would potentially push him even further away so I never admitted my feelings until the night of my friends wedding, where we both suffered emotionally, because we both thought we could handle being there for Meghan and Dave but inwardly we both felt completely out of place and the reality of the situation really sunk in.
Have I pushed people away since this happened? Yes. And I did so for a reason. There’s two lessons I’ve learned when bad shit happens in life: you find out who your true friends are and you find out who is going to jump ship because they live in a plastic bubble of fake happiness. I also didn’t want to drag my friends who were in their bubble of pre-marriage bliss down to my low point, so I became distant. It isn’t fair for me to suck the joy out of another’s life just because I was miserable. Never blame yourself for why I distanced myself, I did it because I cared about you and having me being a cotton-headed ninny muggins would’ve made you end up hating me in the long run. It isn’t that I didn’t care, I promise.
Chapter 2: Finding Love in a Hopeless Place.
One of the key lessons I’ve learned in the 5 months of being single after 8 years is this: internet dating is horrid, I do no recommend it to anyone. We live in the genre of “swipe right” and one-drink dates before feeling the need to see if sexual compatibility exists. We live in a slam, bam, thank you maam society, and I wasn’t having it. I got tired of the same old inbox messages of tool bags liking me for my profile picture without reading anything on my profile. I got tired of being sexually accosted and having guys just looking for something “casual.” Nothing about me screams casual sex. I am extremely shy and awkward and have anxiety in scenario’s that I am not prepared for. I gave up on even bothering and figured fuck it, if I find someone, I find someone. Leave it up to the universe, it knows what is right for you.Â
Enter Xavier.
I started a new job in September of 2015 working for a major corporate box store that is fast, fun, and friendly. My first day on the job I was faced with a loud-mouthed, cocky, charismatic, stubborn, Puerto Rican coworker named Xavier. I hated him. I hated everything about him because he made my life hell the first few months of work by putting my through a hazing process and constantly teasing me at work over anything and everything. His loud personality drove me nuts, his spanish music drove me nuts, the way he would joke about me drove me nuts..
Yet, we ended up becoming extremely close after my breakup. His marriage of 10 years came to an end and his divorce was finalized just mere weeks before my relationship came to an end. We would joke at work all the time which ended up in rumors being spread that we were dating. Both of us were revolted by the idea but to fight fire with fire we would joke around and pretend we were dating. Rumors escalated to the point that girls were saying I was pregnant by him already and that we were getting married. The final nail in the coffin was two girls who were jealous of me getting together and going to HR to inform them that my friendship with Xavier was extremely offensive because he had been sexually harassing me for months. HR pulled my into the office and was trying to get me to “come clean” and admit he had been sexually harassing me, however, he wasn’t. The icing on the cake of this scenario was this: Xavier was in the hospital in a coma fighting for his life, and they took that as an opportunity to try and find a reason to fire him because he was no longer a “reliable” employee. I saw right through their game so I didn’t cave in to their bullshit. When Xavier came back to work, I told him what HR did and told him to be ready for them to try and put a wedge in what we called our friendship, which resulted in everyone in the store claiming *I* was the one who went to HR and reported him. My STL decided to get involved by making a remark about me when I wasn’t at work one day which resulted in Xavier flipping out and jokingly saying I was the best sex he had ever had just to shut my STL up. The STL pulled him in the back and threatened to fire him and told Xavier he was banned from talking to me at all during our shifts together. When you work in the same department and there’s only two of you doing early push for your job and you need communication in order to get your job done, it is extremely hard having to endure being put through the process of immense silent treatment and having zero clue as to why. He finally caught me alone when he went on break a few days later and he told me what happened. I told him if work were to fire him over anything that happened between us that was strictly platonic I would quit my job as well because I would not work there if he couldn’t work there.
I think this was the moment things shifted in our relationship.
See this video? Yeah. This was me the night I realized I had feelings for Xavier. The moment I knew I had feelings for him was the day he told me he was quitting his job and he packed up his locker and walked out. I went home and cried because spotify felt the need to mock me with love songs like the sick sadistic bitch it can be. I had no idea how to deal with them, so I cried it out as I only know how to do when you are a glass case of emotion.
He didn’t actually end up quitting, though. He ended up coming back to work and told me it was because some of the management knew he was leaving and convinced him to stay. Later on he admitted it was actually because he was going to miss seeing me. :)
Xavier chased me, he dined me, he woo’d me. Even when I resisted because I was scared he was patient and kind. He is in a whole different world from me, both due to age (he’s 34) has three kids (19, 6 and 7) and is from a different culture but also a different economic status that I won’t divulge, he scares me, a lot, but that fear has driven me to take a gamble in a way I never thought I would.
But, here is the sad reality of our relationship:
Xavier has stage II hodgkins lymphoma and kidney failure. He is scheduled for a transplant at the end of the year, and that’s only if the chemotherapy he starts soon doesn’t destroy his already weak immune system and kill him the process.
Am I an idiot for getting involved? Yes, and no. When you are faced with your mortality it is a hard pill to swallow. It’s even harder to get involved with someone who may only have limited time left. He’s given me ample opportunity to walk away and find someone else, to not have to endure the pain that is inevitable. Am I scared? Yes. Am I ready? No. But no one ever is. Any of us could get the news we have a short amount of time left, and as Alfred Lord Tennyson says: “”Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”
I’ve made good mistakes and bad mistakes. I’ve changed and grown, but I see it as I have become stronger and wiser. While it hasn’t been an easy road, I am no longer sad that things happened the way they did. Everything in life happens for a reason, I’ve just learned to trust that the universe is guiding me on the right path in life.
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