H put the dog to sleep two weeks after he sent me the email saying he would have to make the decision. He didn't tell me he had made the decision and after he did it, he put it on Facebook but didn't contact me. I found out when someone who knows us both sent me a condolence message. I was devastated.

The next day, I broke my stance of not initiating contact. I didn't say anything about how hurtful it was to find out on Facebook instead of being told by him. I just simply sent him a very short message asking if I could have the dog's collar or something to remember him by. He wrote back pretty quickly. And then wrote me a message every half hour until I responded. In his messages, he said I could have the collar or anything I wanted and said he didn't mean to announce it on Facebook without telling me but he hadn't been that emotional since his father died. (Not sure why he thinks that makes it acceptable.)

I replied and said I would just like to have the collar. I ignored all the other excuses and backpedaling. He asked for my address and I gave him the address of my brother, where I've been living since I got diagnosed with cancer in spring 2017. He wrote back and said he didn't realize I was still living with my brother.

Really? Clearly in the year that he spent not talking to me, he had convinced himself that everything was fine and I was off living my life perfectly well, not struggling with my health or finances at all. Unbelievable.

I wrote back and told him I was not living there by choice and was still in treatment. He replied and asked if I would tell him how it was going. (He never asked for an entire year and then asks me as if I've been the one withholding information from him.) Having waited a year for him to even ask, I was at a loss for words. I told him things aren't good right now, I had had testing all day and we had to stop treatment again.

He replied with a frownie face emoji and said "I'm sorry." I didn't reply. I figured that would be it but 45 minutes later he wrote, "Keep fighting!" I haven't heard from him since. It's been over a month and he never did mail me the dog's collar like he promised, and I wasn't really expecting him to follow through on that anyway. So sad as this interaction just made me see that it's been 3.5 years since BD and I don't see any progress whatsoever.