"Throughout our relationship, passion and desire were the fuel to our love. That was until an intimate moment turned into the moment, we found my cancerous lump. Everything changed after that.
In the beginning of my treatment, I would think to myself, "This man loves me. We have been together for almost 5 years. His dad had cancer; he saw his mother be a caregiver. He knows what to do, and so he will never leave me; no matter what." If you were to ask me then if I thought whether my relationship would end or if I would die from my cancer, I would've said the latter. Oh, how naive I was.
The man that moved across the country to be there for chemotherapy, would end up being too tired to drive me home after my treatments. The man that told me I would be beautiful no matter what, began to stop touching me when I started to lose my hair. The man that said we would get through this together, that after I was cancer free, we'd start our lives again. That same man chose to live his life without me. Chose to live his life as if I didn't survive my cancer. Now, if he was a real man, he would have been able to leave gently. He could have said he wasn't able to continue this life after cancer with me because he was the weak one. Instead, he chose to make me weak. Instead, he choose his path by saying "I have never been in this situation; where I love someone but no longer desire them."
At a time when he was meant to keep me strong, he said these words to me to keep me weak; to break me. And they did; they kept me weak and kept me broken. When I heard those words, I couldn't breathe. How could he?! How could he say those words to me after seeing all that I had been through? Seeing how my body changed is what made him no longer desire who I was. He showed me that my body, is what he thought made me desirable, what he thought made me worthy.
"My external beauty doesn't determine my worth." - Macee
Exactly one year after we found my lump, I decided to choose myself worth over him. His love was no longer enough for what I deserved. It took breast cancer to make me realize that I deserved so much more than what he was capable of giving to me. I knew that my self-love was better than his love. Breast Cancer made it so that my partner entered a caregiver role. Being in that role, showed me his true colors; showed me what he actually loved about me. His actions spoke volumes."
- Macee
