A Death

I am sad to report that my husband has died of metastasized bladder cancer. I am sad about how I wasn’t there, how I didn’t have the chance to be with him at the end.  I had moved back to the States after seven years in the UK. What started so promisingly 7 years ago ended about a month ago after I packed all my goods and shipped them back. We had to share a house while I got my affairs in order and we got along better knowing that there was an end in sight. Weirdly enough.

He had decided, after all that, to return to his ex-wife. We were having so many problems before that, it was almost a relief to have an excuse to separate because I’m not sure I could have made the decision on my own. I had my own cancer scare to deal with and I didn’t feel like he supported me as much as I supported him. I needed a push and this was a push. A month after I moved out, a doctor told him that his cancer was in his liver, bones, and lungs. So unexpected after a positive post-surgery. He expected many years yet.

After that, the end was very rapid. I am still processing it all. Those who followed our story on here needed to know. Blessings to all of you.

I’m Still Standing

Elton John notwithstanding, I am still here. It’s been over 10 years ago that I started this blog and the world was completely different.

When last I blogged, I was awaiting a diagnosis and I have that; Grade 2, stage 2 ductal breast cancer, estrogen +, progesterone +, HER2-. After plunging full-bore into the terminology of breast cancer (and oh how complicated it is), this means that I have the ‘best kind’ of breast cancer to have. I caught it semi-early and it doesn’t have the rapid growth hormone/protein found in the HER2 test.

So, I went in and had a lumpectomy and some nodes removed to further test and type the cancer. More good news. The lump was taken out and there was no cancer discernible in the nodes. This doesn’t mean they aren’t there however, so radiation was recommended. I did not have to have chemo and they advised against it since I have a stent and some history of angina. Chemotherapy is hard on the heart apparently. So I began radiation treatment 2 and a 1/2 weeks ago. I have to visit the hospital daily for five days and have the weekend off. In total, 15 treatments. This is good too because the longer the radiation, the worse for your skin. Mine is just now starting to turn dark and red. For the most part, I am handling it well. Radiation is cumulative so I might be singing a different tune next month.

It’s been interesting these past few years when it comes to spirituality and belief. Meeting up again with folks from Deconversion on Facebook gave me a good mental kick to get back into blogging. Facebook is easy to just sit back and watch the world and the stories roll by without too much engagement, but blogging requires thought and planning. I miss the writing as well. For a time, even following the initial deconversion phase, I fell back into old spiritual and ‘god’ habits. When I married again and moved to England, I started going to a Quaker meeting with my husband because he was going. I thought I could be a Quaker because it was the best of God thought without the evangelicalism. Long story short, it was the final step toward my complete deconversion and acceptance of atheism.

The Quaker story is a long one, but basically British Quaker religion is politics. In fact I met quite a few atheists in the Quaker meeting! I couldn’t see how this could be and I realized that British Quakers were just a ‘Christian’ organization in name only. They were a method. I admire the Quaker way, which I can blog about at length, but they are no longer the Christian radicals of George Fox’s day. This helped me further clarify my own beliefs, or lack of them. Cancer also helped. I think I’d finally had enough of the mental hoops required to believe in a deity that cares about us. No such being exists. There is nature and the effects of nature.

Also helping me along this path is my sister who remarried an ultra-fundamentalist man. She became even more out there and weird and promptly dispensed her brain to the trash bin. She now actually believes that a change of diet will ‘cure’ my cancer (I find this infuriating because it implies it’s my fault I have it) AND, get this, she is now one of those stupid flat earthers because the bible said so, don’t you know. Oh dear. I could go on, but I won’t.

Thanks for reading this far and I shall write more. I promise.

Yes, I’m Still Here

Well, it’s been a weird and interesting few months! Following the news of my husband’s cancer, I went in for a rapid diagnostic breast exam and came out with a sore breast after a biopsy. Turns out the Doc suspects cancer and I’ll find out on June 7th. If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all! As the saying goes.

I’m still working on disengaging emotionally from what may have been my codependent tendency to latch onto people and make them conform to my idea of said relationship. For example, my marriage.  I probably invested WAY too much baggage into this marriage thing and now I’ve reversed myself enough, taken a step back to re-evaluate, and come at it from a different direction so that I can see more clearly the person I married and what I do and do not have control over. Articles like this help me:

Dysfunction can occur if you misjudge the type of relationship that is required. Many people, especially those new in relationships, jump too quickly to the communal style. When they are wrapped up in the fantasy of new love they assume that they will be spending the rest of their lives together. They then give way too much of themselves, again, this can quickly lead to codependency.

That about sums it up for me. Assuming all along that I was the one with the level head, it turns out I can have issues of my own to sort out, perhaps laying an unfair burden on the other person! The stress of it all isn’t going to help me either, especially now.

Unlike my mother and sister who had and have made a fetish out of dieting and the foods they eat, I am not going to go down that route; thinking cancer is a result of diet choices. Cancer is such a complicated mix of environmental factors, our DNA, our ancestral history, and other things we can’t possibly understand, that believing you can control such a thing has to be classed with other mental disorders such as dysphoria. We humans do love to be in control don’t we?  Sure is devastating when we realize we aren’t.

My mother put herself in an early grave because she believed God was going to cure her without medical intervention. Uh, hello! How about IF there is a god, said god would use the things at hand such as doctors and medicine!! Why is it that God has to bear burden of ‘curing’ without anything else whatsoever. Does everything have to be a miracle? Is there something wrong with using the tools at had to fix things? Why? Anyway, I’m done with magical thinking.

I’ll let you know what the diagnosis is, but I suspect it ain’t good.

Quick Update

Providing care and support for my husband as he goes through chemotherapy for bladder cancer. Will update when I can.

Blessings.

Some Dreams Die Hard

It’s very difficult to give up my dream of being another person’s true love. Yes, I know you can love more than one person in a lifetime. I know that it may be unrealistic to imagine one person can meet another’s needs. However, I still can’t help wanting to be special to someone who believes me to be special.  Perhaps not being special to anyone in my life growing up contributed to this dream. Who knows?

My husband is really ill. We got the unfortunate news that the tumor taken out during surgery may have spread and an organ must be removed because of it. That’s major surgery and a major change of lifestyle. I believe I’m ready to help him tackle it. I care about his life and his comfort, so abandoning him was never going to be an issue, even if I did contemplate it a few months ago when all of the marriage issues showed up again.  I’m bracing myself for the worst though. What would I do if something happened to him.. if the worst happened?

Life is going to change yet again. In times past I would have obsessed over a Plan B, but now I think I can meet whatever happens head on without over-thinking it. Needless worry just adds needless stress and I don’t think that would be good for me. I’ve just now cut down on the stress I was experiencing over the marriage by reintroducing antidepressants to my daily routine. They are working well and I can feel the stress reducing. Now being my husband’s carer will no doubt add some more. I need to be calm. Marriage issues should no longer be allowed to be my primary concern. It’s time for carer mode now.

Yet, like tonight, I can’t help feeling sad as I go up to my bedroom. Sad that someone isn’t looking forward to being with me at the end of the day. Sad that I may never meet someone who makes me feel needed and wanted above all others. I’m getting over it, but it still hits me at certain times. I spend my day in one room, he in the other. We occasionally chat over dinner, dishes, the household chores, bills, and his musical needs. But we live separate lives in the same house. The other night we visited friends and it was good to see them, but we came home to separate beds. Occasionally I will sleep in our bed together because I need to feel close to another human being. He never asks me to or expresses his need to sleep with me. And I do mean sleep. Nothing else has happened in our bed, other than sleep, for months. He never expresses an interest or asks me. And that makes me sad.

Escape to Skyrim

When my children were little, their father and I played video games with them. Hours racing each other in Mario Kart brought us together as a family like nothing else did. We weren’t the adventurous outdoor family like those today that take their kids hiking and biking, etc. No, we were indoor folk. We watched television, read books, saw films, and wrote in our journals. And despite all the indoor activities, my kids are all grown, healthy, and happy.

Last Christmas, my son visited and got me interested once again in video games. I bought a Playstation 3 and some used games and started my adventures all over again. I must say I enjoy them now more than I did even then. Gaming has come a LONG way since the 1990s and Turok, Dinosaur Hunter.  Most of them now feel like I’ve inserted myself into a movie.  Take Skyrim for example. I love this game. It is a huge open world that is beautiful to look at and fun to explore. I’ve started three games so far with different characters and abilities and even though the quests are the same, there is always something new and different to experience as each character.

I’m sure that my husband can’t possibly mind. While I’m in the other room slaying frost spiders and necromancers, he’s busy talking on Skype to one of his ‘friends’. I’m at the point now where it’s good that he has others to keep him busy so I can play in peace. Sounds cold perhaps? Not as cold as shunning a wife who was willing to give him everything and was rejected for fetish talk and long distance relationships. I’ll stick to Dragon Age, Skyrim, and Fallout 4, thank you very much.

The Joys of Drugs

And by drugs, I mean antidepressants. It’s been a while since I last wrote; time enough for my antidepressants to kick in. It takes 2 to 4 weeks for things to start working after a long time without taking them. But, I can say that they’ve made a difference.

I am less despondent and less critical. I do not have those horrible cyclical mood swings associated with menopausal women. I can now speak to my husband without crying, which for the last year I could not do. I also think that it has allowed me to feel normal in my newfound take on the marriage. The jealousy that had plagued me is gone. Now that I know that nothing I say or do changes anything in this marriage, I have given up trying to change things. This also means that I have given up investing in it as well.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this arrangement, but I can say that the advantages for me outweigh the negatives. I’ve always run my course of action in life through a list of pros and cons. If they seem balanced, I listen to my gut; my intuition. It has never steered me wrong. I’ve gone against my gut feelings and have lived with the consequences; one of them being this marriage. So I know them to be true. How I wish I listened to myself more. However, if I did that, life would be boring and I wouldn’t learn new things about myself and other people.

I’ve learned SO much in the last five years.  I’ve learned that perhaps I should not have been married. I bought into romance and not into real life. I was ill prepared for life as a wife and partner. Who is prepared really? We either set incredibly unrealistic expectations for married couples or we dispense with all the rules. No wonder people are confused. I also learned that perhaps I’m not suited to having a male partner. I’m not saying I’m suited for any sex or gender at all. All I’m saying is that I plunged headlong into a life that was expected of me and never once thought any of it through seriously.  I gave men what I thought they wanted to get along. I had no real desire for them. I’ve lived my life on automatic pilot; feeling nothing and now, when I actually took a chance on the feelings that I was swept up in, it turned out not to be for the best.

Tough lessons. But they are lessons earned and learned. They are mine and I am no longer going to do what anyone else wants me to do. Anything I do now is because it’s good for me and because I want to. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about others, but caring for others will be because I really care and not because I’m supposed to care.