It’s Com­pli­cated

This is part of the It’s Com­pli­cated series.

On FetLife, I have my rela­tion­ship sta­tus set to com­pli­cated because I live with my soon-​to-​be-​ex-​wife. We are in the mid­dle of a friendly and col­lab­o­ra­tive divorce; we are basi­cally room­mates and I have my social life and she has hers. In fact, we get along bet­ter now than ever before. Still, we are both anx­ious to get on with our lives; it was quite the ride but now it is over.

We had an appoint­ment with our attor­ney to sign and file our divorce papers on Mon­day August 3^rd, 2009. But on the Thurs­day before, she was diag­nosed with breast can­cer. I promised to stay with her through surgery and chemo because she doesn’t have any­body close by that could take care of her through it. She is still fam­ily even though we do not want to be mar­ried anymore.

We are friendly most of the time and cour­te­ous all of the time. I do not lie to her about my com­ings and goings or what I am up to, although I try not to rub things in her face since she is not really up to dat­ing and get­ting laid in her condition.

Also I value my pri­vacy for my own sake; I am build­ing a new life and I want to keep it pris­tine and new and I do not want to “con­t­a­m­i­nate” it with stag­nant water and feel­ings. She is com­pletely vanilla and it hurts to even try to explain to her what I am because she does not have the tools to under­stand it. She is try­ing, though, bless her heart.

Her lumpec­tomy went bet­ter than even my opti­mistic expec­ta­tions and she is cur­rently under­go­ing a com­bined chemother­apy and bio­ther­apy. She is hav­ing adverse reac­tions to the ther­apy, though, and it sounds like her oncol­o­gist will reduce the inten­sity of each treat­ment and pro­long the course, mak­ing it longer than ini­tially expected.

When it rains, it pours, how­ever. We just received word that the doc­tors think that she may have brain can­cer as a result from her breast can­cer. We will not receive con­fir­ma­tion on whether or not we are look­ing at brain can­cer for another month, some­time in the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary, 2010. It is going to be a long wait…

There is noth­ing much I can do for her, except be there for her when the ghosts come creep­ing. As such, my sched­ule may be some­what erratic and I might be unex­pect­edly unreach­able at times. In gen­eral, though, I will just con­tinue doing things the way I have been; if noth­ing else, I need the distraction.

Update: Please see It’s Com­pli­cated, Part 2.