is not a fun place to be.

I’ve been there and made it back.
I’ve also been the final straw that made a most important person in my life lose their shit.

This was my most disgraceful hour.

Sometimes life deals a truly shit hand, one that bypasses asking why and heads straight to anger, shock and a loss of faith.  This particular hand included an extremely vicious and unrelenting cancer.  When My Person’s mother was diagnosed, everything progressed so rapidly, I have no recollection of those years.  Many years later, it’s still a blur.  I remember specific mundane and major occurrences in extreme detail but it’s amazing how fast five years can whiplash you.

My Person was 868.3 km/539.5 mi. away.  This inter-state commute had paved a familiar course in our lives.  Cancer was a familiar occupant in our household; fucking cancer held all of our attention hostage all the time.  So while MP was trying to keep cancer and its toxic treatment’s effects at bay, what am I doing?

Getting drunk at a bar with someone I should NOT be getting drunk with.  He and I know what’s going to happen.  We are both someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend.  This was not a spontaneous meet, nor an “I got so wasted [fill in the blank]” situation.

Does it even matter that sex didn’t happen?  Not really.  With every passing second after leaving the bar together, I was smashing through years of trust, sometimes wavering but mostly solid and built with love.  How rapidly I  knowingly destroyed said trust was shocking.  I didn’t know I was capable of inflicting hurt like this.  I wouldn’t know the full extent until MP got back.

Why…?

I could say that MP and I had gone through too much at that point in our relationship, that our intense life experiences combined with getting together at such a young age was about to strike us out.

Life experiences included: being rendered homeless, car wrecks, discrimination, almost death, hospitals, hate, death, chronic illness, psych ward, drugs, birth, unemployment, death, therapy, terminal illness, hospitals, mental illness, grief, rehab, alcoholism, motherfucking hospitals.

But really, I was a coward.  

I hinted at wanting out, we had many a fight and breaking up was articulated by us both at various points, but I cheated to force a confrontation that I couldn’t otherwise broach.

I cheated on MP whose mother was suffering from a horrific cancer because I was too weak to have The Talk for real.

No wonder I got the call from the bridge.

It was and will be my one and only cheat.