Untangled 18: Eat Crow

It was indeed late-stage prostate cancer, according to him. He began telling me about PSA numbers and the possibility of having surgery. I felt like I was in a tunnel—my freedom was no longer within reach. When would this be over?! What was my obligation anyway? My life was no longer my own. I needed to detach myself from this whole thing. I felt stuck. How do you break up with someone who’s dying? I didn’t have it in me. I thought he would die long before I got to the end of my rope. I no longer knew what I wanted. A part of me felt like I should stay with him because I had so much skin in the game; another part felt like I should cut my losses. It was like driving north, hoping to run into Florida. This simply could not end well.

I was angry because he stopped drinking the juices I would prepare. Weekly, I purchased fresh vegetables and carrots in bulk. I washed, chopped, and juiced everything for him, and many times the juice would go bad just sitting in the fridge. I would find bags of candy in the car console, Bacardi and Coke in the back of my kitchen cabinets, and he would eat takeout and fried food every day. When I would bring up the fact that he was killing himself, he would tell me I was acting like a b****. That was the worst thing. His mouth was so foul, and on more than one occasion, he would actually say that to me—the person whose house he was living in, whose car he was driving, and who was paying for dinners, dates, and trips. He would excuse this by saying he didn’t actually call me the word, so I was overreacting.

I was trying to make his life better while he was making mine a living hell. So I sat tight-lipped as he ate and drank himself into an early grave. I started ignoring his wolf cries and just treated him like something I would soon be free of. I had to force selfies and pictures out of him whenever we went out. I needed to show people that things were okay. In the beginning, he was so nice to me that I told the world. I wanted to share the makings of this great romance. You know how we do—folk love a good backstory, and I wanted to deliver that. So, I had to keep up the façade in case he reverted back to the man I thought he was in the beginning. I had no taste for crow, so I would have to make him into the man I thought he was.

I also thought the cancer was making him mean. I’d heard it could do that, so I never really attributed his behavior entirely to him. He would say himself that the pain made him act differently.

He had long since stopped holding my hand, kissing, or touching me, but we would still travel together. That was kind of a relief because that was one area I felt better about. I didn’t learn until later that narcissists don’t touch you—they use intimacy as a weapon. They want you to feel unloved and lower your self-esteem. The joke was on him: I didn’t want those things from someone I was supporting financially. I no longer saw him as my man but as my son.

Whenever he began to sense my indifference or saw me pulling away, he would bring me flowers and revert back to his early acting days. That would give me hope that he was capable of being that person. The flowers were a Band-Aid, meant to replace sincere apologies, changed behavior, and meaningful conversations. We no longer talked to each other; we talked at each other.