My mother got admitted around midnight in July 2023, after a full day at the hospital. I called my girlfriend at the time, who is an oncology nurse, as soon as they took my mom in. She didn’t answer; it was late, she lives in Houston, I thought nothing of it and had bigger things to think about. She called me later that morning and apologized, sharing that my call didn’t go through her Do Not Disturb settings.

I left XXL Magazine in April 2023 because I was tired of being treated like a clown, knowing how much I contributed and how much of myself I poured into my work. We didn’t end on bad terms, but I couldn’t stay, it was untenable. I worked for OkayPlayer from late February until about the end of July. When that was done, I flew out to Houston to spend time with my then-girlfriend because I obviously missed her and needed a break from NYC. My day to day life was splitting my time (very unevenly) between handling a majority of my mother’s day to day caretaking needs, and working for OKP; I absolutely earned some time for myself, with my dad fully taking over my duties in my absence, with my sister coming when her work responsibilities allowed.

I was in Houston from about 6 weeks, a little under half of July and almost all of August, making sure to come back home before my mother’s birthday on August 27th. Somewhere around the middle of August, my mom texted me to tell me that when she went to her immunotherapy appointment, they discovered that she lost 15 pounds, and were scheduling an emergency CAT scan for her. I was over 1,000 miles away; I felt helpless. Every day I was in Houston, I worried about her, even with my mom asking me not to. I wanted her to be ok and I didn’t want things to go left while I was away, which was one of my worst nightmares.

After the CAT scan, they realized my mom was fine, her weight loss was solely due to her not eating enough, not any issues with her cancer, which wasn’t worsening. She was staying up late and and waking up later because she was watching the Olympics, even though she was fully aware she can watch the replays on my Peacock account. She did not care; my mom LOVED track and field and had no qualms with keeping her nearly 70 year old body awake at 2 am to watch it. All that waking up late cost her time to eat, and she wasn’t thinking about food anyway; she was thinking about the breakdancing competition on her TV. Of course, this aggravated me, but I laughed, happy that she was ok. I flew home about a week and a half later, making it home for her birthday. I don’t even remember how we celebrated or what she wanted; when your mother is as ill as mine was, you tend to just hope she makes it to certain milestones. She made it past Thanksgiving and Christmas, her favorite holidays, and this would be her second (and final) birthday with us.

When I was in Houston with my then-girlfriend, everything was fine between us. About 2 weeks after I got home, we were having a normal text convo, and she revealed she felt “weird” about a dream she had. The dream? She left me because I took too long to get engaged to her. I didn’t take this seriously because, I had no job and a very ill mother, there was nothing I could do about that. But I was also offended, because we had been together five years; I told her in year 2 she was the love of my life and that we were going to get married. I didn’t see anyone else for me, and the way I treated her reflected that. So for this “dream” (sure) to come up, then for her to act like I had no reason to be annoyed by how she was evasive about what the dream meant to her, blew this up. I asked repeatedly, in plain language, what does this mean, and she said “If you’re asking am I going to follow the dream, I’m not.” I wasn’t asking that at all. She then revealed that if she were to get to the point of being tired of waiting to be engaged in real life, she would “have to see how she felt in the moment,” which is a crazy ass answer. Nonetheless, the convo ended peacefully but I knew she was still mad, which didn’t make sense to me then and doesn’t now.

About two weeks after that (two week intervals were very big for me in 2024), we had a text convo about my mental health struggles, the despair of my mom’s now up and down health, my changing family dynamics, my career issues; basically, everything bothering me. I was the lowest I had ever been in my life. I was honest with her about how terrible and depressed I felt, like things would never get better for me internally and externally.

The next day, she texted me and said “I’m having trouble staying positive about your situation.” It is one thing to feel like someone you love is in dire circumstances; it’s something else entirely to tell them you are running out of hope for them, when they already have little hope for themselves. It was such a strange and hurtful thing to say, but I was so upset about my life, I just moved on. She didn’t try and clean it up or anything; she felt how she felt.

Over the next month, she would begin to distance herself from me, one time outright disappearing for a day and not speaking to me when I started texting her about my struggles again, then telling me she was busy with such things as watching the Netflix turd known as The Circle and working out. She was gone from the early afternoon until the next morning, something she does not do. When I asked her about it that morning, she acted like her behavior was normal and that I was acting weird for asking about it. Just a bunch of dumb ass excuses to cloud the truth; the terrible circumstances I had to face due to my mother’s illness, which I didn’t choose, made her just stop caring about me and what I had going on. My mom falling ill and music journalism collapsing in on itself changed my timeline for everything; there wasn’t shit I could do about that, and she knew. She was too much of a coward to say it was too much and she wanted to leave; she just became more and more callous.

This all culminated in her sharing that she feels a lot of “angst” in our relationship, mostly connected to us not having a plan for our relocation (she didn’t want to stay in Texas). The issue at the core of this is, she told me she wanted to move to another state; since we were long distance, the goal was to live together once that move happened. I told her since I have the flexible career (journalism) and she didn’t (oncology), she should look up the cities she can work in, then bring them to me and we use that as a starting point. She agreed. She then spent three years and only found 3 states, which I had to keep asking her over and over to give me. She spent years dragging her feet, and now, with an ailing mother and my life falling apart by the day, she felt it was urgent.

This led to her saying I “blamed” her for us not moving, 4 days of angry texting that led to her telling me she was not going to talk to me until the weekend (she shared this on a Wednesday in mid-October). I have expressed since the first year of our relationship that I don’t like the silent treatment/disappearing act, especially in a long distance relationship, because it’s unfair to me and also dangerous. If something happened to her or something happened to me, how would either party know if one half is intentionally ignoring the other? She knew how I felt about that behavior, and decided to do it for 4 days because she felt disrespected, something she would then not be able to explain when asked about it once she resurfaced. I wasn’t rude, I didn’t curse at her (because I don’t do that), I didnt yell, I was just tired of everything deteriorating, followed by vague answers as to why any of this escalating. She simply didn’t want to deal with her very real desire to walk because my life was fucked up, and chose to bullshit around that point.

We got on the phone that Sunday night. Longest phone call of my life. We spoke for 3.5 hours, but I knew my relationship was over in the first five minutes. As I mentioned earlier, she didn’t answer when I called to tell her my mom got admitted to the hospital. She didn’t answer again about 13 months later when my mom had to go back to the hospital late at night. I wasn’t tripping, but remember that she said she would handle it the first time. She called me later that morning and tested it like a day later; still wouldn’t work. She told me she would address it, and I moved on. I didn’t bring it up repeatedly, I really didn’t care since she said she’d take care of it.

Five minutes into that three hour call, I asked why didnt she take her phone into her service provider’s store and let them fix whatever the issue was with her DND. She interrupted me to say “…because I don’t have time for that shit and its not a high priority right now.” I was so taken aback by this answer that all I could muster was a “Wow.” You had a year plus to figure out why your phone literally doesn’t ring when your long distance boyfriend, with a sick mother, calls you after 12. I wasn’t calling to make kissy sounds in the phone, it was for an emergency every single time. This did not matter to her and I had to accept what I had thought for the last 2 months; the woman I planned to spend the rest of my life with, no longer gave a fuck about me. I kept talking because I wanted to give her the floor to share whatever her grievances truly were and well…..that was a ride.

Before we got to what she was upset about, she tried to defend disappearing for four days, before giving up and admitting it was excessive. Then she brings up us relocating, and starts arguing with and disputing that she wasn’t telling me where she wanted to move, along with not telling me when she wanted me to move in with her in Houston, temporarily, before a bigger move. This back and forth lasts too long, and out of nowhere she says “You’re right.” After my confusion, she reveals that she was “intentionally” not giving me any info on either move because she knew I was going through a lot with my mother, my family and my career. As if she was doing me a favor.

She made it seem like her leaving me in the dark was some sort of noble deed, after arguing that she wasn’t doing so. There is a way to discuss us moving, with tact. The answer is not to have developments, not tell me, then tell me you didn’t tell me because I was having a difficult time, which is indirectly blaming me for something I didn’t tell you to do. To be honest, I don’t believe this at all; I think it was just a convenient excuse. She wasn’t telling me and concocted a non-existent argument because she just wanted to go.

The convo continues on and she says something to me that I thought people only said in movies. “So you’re perfect?,” she exclaimed, after 10-15 mins of me airing grievances that she both couldn’t defend or explain. She tried to get me to “guess” what I did wrong in my relationship; when I refused and told her to say what she had a problem with, she shared the most callous shit I’ve ever heard from a woman.

Her first issue with me? She felt I took too long to get medicated, for my mental health struggles. I have generalized anxiety disorder and depression. I wasn’t angry, or abusive, or horrible to people…I was just sad and heartbroken all the time. I was afraid my cancer-stricken mother was going to die every day, I had no money, I was struggling as me and my family went through this uncharted territory; I was in pain. She expressed long ago that she was pretty much tired of me talking about how upset I was all the time, and that’s what she wanted the medicine to do; shut me the fuck up.

I didn’t get medicated for over a year because to put it plainly? I was afraid. I grew up being taught not-so-great things about taking mental health meds and I was afraid of side effects, personally. I had to push myself through that and decided to go get help when I couldn’t breathe as we waited for the results of one of my mom’s many CAT scans. Funnily enough, I was only given a low dosage of Trazodone. So, I’m being made to feel like shit over a medication that isn’t that serious at all. After I explained everything I said here, she said “That doesn’t make sense.”

Her next grievance was also ice cold. She told me she would have handled my depressive episode better than me. Yes, me being miserable over my mother being sick and the other stressors in my life, she would have done a better job than me. I was calm for the entire call; this was the comment that truly pissed me off. She has never experienced what I was dealing with, there is no comparison to make. She was angry that I didn’t ask how she was doing over a course of four text conversations; she bought it up when it happened, which was weeks before. I apologized and we were fine. For some reason, she bought it back up, and I was lost as to what she wanted me to do. It was never intentional. I told her “If I forgot to ask how you were doing, why wouldn’t you assume I was really struggling at the time?” She responded with, “Oh, I knew you were [struggling].” Very well then.

We finally end the call, she texts me the next morning saying she can’t talk because she’s behind in work because of our convo/issues last week. She then starts talking to me about when she wants me to mail her gift to her crib (her birthday was the next day) since she was going to be out of town at a festival in Atlanta. I knew about the festival, but the audacity to talk to me about your bday gift (which was never sent), along with you now having no time to discuss all that crazy shit you said last night, was insulting. She also suddenly realized she should take her phone to get fixed after saying it wasn’t important the night before; she knew what she said the night before about her not having time or prioritizing was both mean and bullshit. And no, she didn’t apologize for saying that.

I told her in that very same text convo that I no longer want to be with her based on her behavior as of recently and the things she said on that call. I gave her the option of getting on the phone to talk, but if she didn’t that’s fine too. Not only did she not call, she didnt text, she didn’t say another word.

Things were bad. Then my mom called me into her room to tell me she had to go back on chemo, but did not want to tell me because she knew I was upset about my breakup. The illness that would eventually take my mother away from me was worsening, and she still thought to protect me first, by waiting a couple days to tell me. I now finally knew the difference between someone who truly loves you, and someone who just says it.

I have not heard a word from someone I dated for 5 years, since October 21st of last year. She treated me like shit, then disappeared in silence. She didn’t send condolences after my mother died this April either, and she knew, because a bunch of her friends took it upon themselves to reach out to me. You really never know how someone will abandon you, but I found out, in the most difficult time I’ve ever faced.