Hi everybody,
I apologise in advance for the long post but I need to let off steam to feel better and need to explain the whole story for other people to understand. If it's inappropriate or anything I can delete it. Thanks for any feedback you can give me.
I met her last October, around 9 months ago. I had recently come out of a long story with my ex and the same for her with her ex (they had still not broken up completely, more below). Despite a quite big age gap (she's 36, 8 years older than me) we really liked each other immediately and we spent 4 months pretty happy and even if none of us was taking the new relationship so seriously initially, we felt every day more and more in love. When in February I think we were almost ready to try to be in an official relationship, she was diagnosed out of nowhere with a non-hodgkins lymphoma, pretty big mass in the abdomen, grade 3a/b, stage 3/4. This news was crushing for both of us. She returned to her home country to have chemotherapy and we haven't met again physically since then.
Because of the Pandemic situation, to avoid any risk of infection, she decided to live in a isolate house with her ex. Her mother lived nearby and she is a doctor so would help her with the treatment and everything else. The decision to live with her ex was suffered by me at the beginning but she was still very attached to him, one of the person she trusted the most in the world, despite not being in love with him any more for years. He's like family to her and I knew he would have done all the best he could to help her, something I couldn't have done for sure since I was locked in UK (and I couldn't have left the country even if I wanted to).
We were still in love with each other, so we kept texting and videocalling almost every day and I tried to do all my best to support her, cheer her up, make her feel better in any way during her chemotherapy path. Her ex knows about me and in these 5 months, once in a while there have been situation of tension between us. Her ex was jelaous of me and viceversa but most of time we were aware of course that the most important thing was just her health so it would have been detrimental and nonsensical to force a decision or argue. Our priority had to be her health, period.
In these months, her mood was very variable, unstable as you can imagine, and my mood changes with hers. She would have some days quite optimistic and others pretty depressed but we always showed love for each other, a bit like secret lovers who promise to see each other again after the storm was over. However, there have been many other moments when she was very pessimitic about the outcome of the chemotherapy and her thought was that would have been too scary to start a reationship with me with the fear the cancer could come back at any time. Since we don't how many years she has left (I hope 10-20 at least but that's the ideal scenario, some people don't go through 2-5 as far as I know) she would tell me she prefers to get back with her ex, a more 'solid' relationship. I learnt in these months that these thoughts of her were very mood dependent so I tried not to take them too seriously, and we agreed to stay in this limbo where we wait for the end of the chemo and then we'll discuss what would be of our relationship.
From my side, I am quite confused. I felt really in love some weeks, and some others I just wonder what I'm doing. I have even thought that I'm actually making things worse calling her almost every day, giving her expectations I cannot fulfill. I am very happy to talk to her at any time and I can't wait to see her and hug her again, I miss her, she misses me, we chat most of the times like lovers. However, when I think logically, the perspective of having a serious relationship with her is scaring at times. We only met 9 months ago, spent 5 of these 9 months in different countries and I don't know if what I feel is really love now. I'm in love I know, but it's not the same unconditional love her ex could give after have been together for 8 years. I would like to go back to the initial relationship, light and without expectations and see how it goes but now the situation is very different, she can't afford that. She's afraid the cancer would come back in a year or two and doesn't want to risk to be with someone 'new' that could leave her alone at any time. How do people live these situations? Do they find that the fear of death push them to the unknown or rather staying in a 'safe port'? Considering also that if she wants to remain in her country would be really hard for us to keep a love relationship at all.
I understand her and I'm afraid to leave her alone as well, i feel so guilty for this potential future scenario. In these months, considering also the lockdown on top of this horrible situation, I found myself to think about this for hours, days, and we would cyclically go into discussions (maybe once a month), where we talked about our feelings and fears more directly. I tried to be as strong as possible to not put more pressure on her but sometimes I had to spit out that even if I care so much about her I am really scared about the future. My own personal future was even uncertain before all this happened honestly (I don't like much anymore my job, don't know what I really want to do in my life) so her cancer + covid scenario made me feel often quite miserable. I have very good housemates and friends luckily I can talk to often, otherwise this isolation would have been really terrible.
Until the PET at the end of the chemotherapy (in 1 month), we don't even know if the chemo worked (the previous PET scan was pretty encouraging luckily). I wish with all my heart that this works. I don't know how to behave though. In a recent chat we both agreed that it's better for her (and me as well probably) if she stays with her ex as I was explaining before. However she also said she really loves me and thinks between us would have really worked in another cancer-free world. I think that rationally this makes sense but I still feel guilty for not loving her enough, I feel a coward for not saying: 'I will always love you, whatever happens'. My life is too uncertain to say that, I don't know what I really feel. Sometimes I hope she would come back to UK after treatment and we could try to stay together and build something more solid, some other times I feel would just hurt us more, and I might break her heart at some point and waste her last years... (even if we don't know how many).
Sorry again for me venting in this way but I needed to write down my thoughts before my mind exploded and reach some of you guys. Thanks a lot in advance for any advice.
Anyone with cancer has to be so brave, something I couldn't ever imagine and now I start to understand only a bit what that means. Big hug, stay strong...
Cheers
