GALing and Boundaries with XH

[AntoniaB]

Oh my god. 2 hours after I brought that cat home, my beloved boy cat became acutely ill. Like flipping a switch. He is the other cat's son. The vet thinks he has cancer in his intestine, or an obstruction of some sort. He is in ICU now...I was given the option to drive him myself to UPenn Vet hospital to emergency in PA, where they could do a nighttime ultrasound and exploratory surgery, and if it was cancer, remove the cancer, bowel resection, and start chemo. And that's probably 5 or 10 grand.

OR. Let him go all night here, monitored, on pain meds, and then see him in the a.m. to pretty much say goodbye, at which point they'll do an exploratory surgery here without the ultrasound, and if he's fixable, try to fix him, and if not, don't wake him back up.

Even if someone handed me 10k, I don't think I could put him through the UPenn route. Nor could I reasonably get in a car in my state and drive into center city Philly, 2 hours away.

DE has no ultrasound available at night. At all. I live in podunk nowhere.

The vet agreed to do exploratory surgery without it to ease the cost a bit. I think I'm into it for 1000 already. I don't even care. I feel like I have to do something. Sometimes obstructions can be removed or tumors heal...but the vet says she wants me to be ready for this to be it for him.

He's the cat who has always been closest to me and to XH, by far.

He's only 14 and showed no signs of problems till today. He has a hard mass in his abdomen and was screaming in pain when I left him at the vet.

I spoke to XH on the phone for the first time since last Christmas. After a few minutes he could not hold up his cold sounding/odd voice that he's used ever since he left, and he broke down and was "normal."

There were a lot of things said very openly from my end, mainly because I know that DBing is pointless with him, and I need to move on and in so many ways I have.

What I gathered from the conversation is that we are two people trying very hard not to have attachments to each other and we can't break it entirely.

He said that he would be continuing to talk to me/be in my life if I would allow it, but that he was respecting MY wishes to not have him in my life.

(he has no clue that that's just messed up under the circumstances).

He told me that he has never filled out the paperwork sent in August for him to get the final installment of the divorce settlement and told me that the reason was that he just was so stressed with his job anymore and there so many extra hours a day that he can't make himself fill out the paperwork. It's earning me money every day...while he's losing...and he said he didn't care, to just be happy that I was getting more towards my retirement.

I told him I finally got a raise. He said that was good, and when he heard the salary I'll get in 4 years, he said I'd be "well off" and really "set" for later years. He sounded jealous.

He told me that he has never gotten a cat because of friends with allergies and because he didn't want to go through having a cat to lose it the way we were going through this now.

In short...he has done nothing to "move" in his life...no roots down, no new pets, no going back to school. Nothing permanent. Didn't even get rid of his truck even though it's pretty old and has no AC. In Delaware.

Honest to god, I think that in some remote corner of his mind, I'm still the backup plan.

I have "moved on" in many more ways than him, with this ONE exception. When it comes to the cats we shared for all those years, I do need him to help me make a decision or to at least say "this is what I'd do if I had 'custody'."

The support from my family is not the same. Only he has the bond with this cat that I have. So I feel better for having involved him even though it's not a DB thing...but honestly, there is no point to DBing with him anymore.

I think he's so firmly in that life that he can't get out. I think he doesn't want to get out but he's also seeing it's not what he thought it would be. I think he underestimated how hard it would be to walk away.

It is so painful to realize that there is a connection there that cannot be severed, when that connection is just so pointless. I said to him "I tried so hard to not need you for anything and on this, I need you, and I'm so angry at myself", and he kept saying that it was ok.

I might end up seeing him tomorrow at the vet if he can get off work for a few hours...but he said he wasn't sure and not to delay surgery on his account. He said he wants to see the cat, but honestly, he works with OW. She'll know if he leaves the school. He will have to run this by her and this is probably something that will scare the crap out of her.

God it's just one thing on top of another, and my family is all pushing me not to talk to him or see him, and I keep saying that the void of the cat being gone if he will be is worse by far than seeing XH for a bit if that even happens.