"It’s cancer. Stage-three breast cancer." The fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor flickered like frost in my eyes. The hand clutching the diagnosis shook. The man beside me spoke for the first time: I’ll just pop to the restroom. He never came back. Phone off. The man who had wept and laughed with me every day for three years disappeared, leaving only the chill of his back.
The Weight of a Turned Back
Did he push through the door at the end of the corridor and bolt? Or did he reach the end of the hallway and stop, his steps growing too heavy to carry on?
The issue is the back. Backs cannot lie. At the moment of farewell, people cannot face each other; if they did, they would crumple. So they turn away. With their backs they say, I am leaving you.
The curious thing is that even the back trembles. However cold it tries to be, it cannot freeze. Shoulders stiffen awkwardly; fingertips tremble faintly. And so, staring at that back, we delude ourselves that something still remains. Surely he still loves me; the trembling is regret.
The Perverse Relief of Being Abandoned
"I was abandoned because I’m sick. So if I had been healthy…?"
The inner voice seeps out on a hospital bench.
Strange, isn’t it? The moment we are abandoned, what surfaces is a queer reassurance: It wasn’t my fault; it was my illness. There is a perverse pleasure in the pain of abandonment. If I was left because I was too sick, then I am innocent. I am the victim. I am pure.
We find comfort in this stale self-pity. My friend Sujin said, "Getting cancer wasn’t the saddest part. The saddest part is knowing he was simply bored and used your illness as an excuse. So it isn’t the disease that hurts—it’s the boredom."
Min-jae and Ji-young’s 827 Days
"Min-jae still hasn’t managed to leave me—827 days and counting."
Ji-young, 32, was diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer two years ago. That day, in the same hospital corridor, Min-jae went to the restroom and returned after ten minutes. Then he said, I pulled the car around earlier because I have meetings. You can take a taxi home, right?
Since that day Min-jae has come to Ji-young’s apartment every afternoon, lunchbox in hand. Yet Ji-young says his touch has grown cold. He can’t look at my chest. He flinches from the surgical scars.
"But something odd happened: I started loving Min-jae more the moment he began to hate my illness. The fact that I could still control someone with my sick body gave me a strange thrill.
Yuri and Jung-woo’s 94 Days
Yuri, 29, had thyroid cancer—benign, 98 % survival. Still, Jung-woo fled after 94 days.
I’m sorry. I’m weak. It feels as if your sickness is somehow my fault. I can’t bear it.
He wept as he spoke. I failed to protect you. It’s because of me you got sick.
Yuri replied, So you leave because you failed to protect me? You abandon me for that?
The abandoned are betrayed twice: once when their lover walks away, and again when they believe the reason he left is me.
Why Are We Drawn to This?
Cancer is never just an illness. It hands us the taboo: You might die. Faced with that taboo, a lover has two choices:
- Promise to stay until the end, then finally leave, exhausted.
- Leave from the very start.
Both are horrific, yet we find the second more monstrous because it abandons us simply for being sick.
Psychologists note that people often turn a loved one’s vulnerability into an instrument of control. A weakened partner cannot leave. Deep down, we may even wish for our lover’s frailty—because then I will never leave.
But the fantasy shatters. The lover departs, and in leaving, proves the sick one stronger: I can live without you.
The Revenge of the One Left Behind
"Fine, you left. But remember—you didn’t leave me, you left my sick body."
Staring at the hospital ceiling, I whispered, And that back of yours will always be cold.
The abandoned dream of revenge. We swear we have moved on—I’ll live well—while inwardly praying, May you suffer forever because of me.
Odd, how we believe that being forsaken will torment the one who walked away. You caused this pain; therefore guilt will gnaw at you for life.
But the cruelty is that, most often, they live well. We know, even as we watch their icy backs, that one day those backs will warm.
You are neither dying nor dead. Someone you love simply turned away. Yet why do you feel flayed to ribbons?
Or is it that you need this agony— because nothing proves love more savagely than someone walking out the door?