I regularly worry about my boyfriend dying

Tagged as nsfw for sensitive topics.

I have been dating my boyfriend for almost a year now. We’ve had our ups and downs recently but everything has been going smoothly.

He had cancer as a teen a few years before I met him, and he’s been given the all clear for a while. There’s some side effects from chemo that linger like hair loss but it’s manageable and for the most part he’s healthy.

I try not to bring up the topic around him. If I have a question, google could probably answer it, he talks about it openly and jokes about it, and I’m proud of him for it.

It’s always been at the back of my mind since being with him for a few months “what if I get the call someday, that its come back? That I’m going to have to watch him go through all of it? And there’s nothing I can do to help? Is my time with him going to be cut short?”

And that last bit, is physically painful for me. If I were to lose him, I would never recover, knowing there’s nothing I can do to make the situation better or make it go away. We had a break a few months back and I was a shell of my former self.

I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. The first week during the break I was sick. I cannot live without him, my mind wouldn’t be able to cope. I’ve been through loses before, but having to lose the one person that has been able to understand me, I don’t think I would ever be able to come back from that.

Often, I put the thought down as intrusive. I have an anxiety disorder and am medicated for it, these thoughts aren’t just exclusive to him. If someone is in my life, an intrusive thought about them is expected. It just happens.

So, to try and mitigate the thought, I try to focus on what’s happening at that moment, with him, rather than focusing on what’s happening with him in the future, like making things memorable and just having fun. A little phrase often helps “that’s an issue for future me, not current me”