For more than ten years, I worked in a major advertising agency. Until 2004 everything was fine: I was successful, I made a good living, I was happy . One night, at a friend's house, I meet Nicolas, the second man of my life . A charm. He evolves in the same professional circles as me. I fall in love very much. I am 43 years old. I saw an exhilarating and serene happiness, no obstacle on the horizon.

One evening in May, I'm in my bathtub, when I realize that I have a small hard ball under the right breast. The next day, I make an appointment with my gynecologist, who prescribes a mammogram . I've been given the test and I'm being told that it's a benign tumor that needs to be removed. A month later I marry my lover. A wedding in our image, funny and crazy, in a village in the South West. All our friends made the trip, I feel radiant. I like "serious" this man. I insist on the "serious" because it makes me beautiful, young and just crazy as I love being.

We are having a dream summer. I feel strong, full of happiness to approach the back. The month of September arrives and, as agreed with my doctor, I pass on the billiard so that the tumor is removed under my breast. When I wake up, an oncologist enters my room: "It's a cancer, " he says simply. My husband is by my side at this time. He has collapsed. During the next nine months, he will be considerate, supportive, loving. This relentless attention is essential because it gives me the courage to face treatment with strong morale. For nine months, I am a chemo and a radiotherapy. The year passes and we are hopeful.

We decide to take a vacation of nabobs to recover from this difficult year. In June, we leave for two months in the United States. There, I feel my husband different, strange, a little distant. I am so made that when something is wrong, I ask questions, I express myself, I am unable to give way to the unsaid. One night, at the hotel, I ask Nicolas what's wrong. He tells me that the last few months have been tormented, that he is feeling the repercussions of all these emotions, that it takes time for us to find each other but that it will be okay. We can understand it. However, deep inside me, I feel that it does not turn around, I question again and again: "Do you still love me? We always make love. But even when we hold each other's arms for long, I feel it far away, absent.

Back in my office, my colleague, leads me to hell. With treatments, I do not have a hair on my head, and at the slightest opportunity she repeats: "It's not because you're sick that I'm going to grant you favors. My professional life, until then dreamed, turns into hell. Two months later, my boss summons me, looks me straight in the eye and said: "We think a lot about you, we are worried, you have to rest, the disease tires you, you have to take a step back. "Hypocritical way to kick me out. I am stunned.

To defeat my cancer , for a year, I fought, going to draw deep in my physical and mental resources. All that to hear me say that! I tell him that I do not need rest, that I have never been so fit. A few days ago, I learned that I was saved. I just climbed Everest. But he does not want to know anything and sends me to settle my affairs with the direction of the human resources. I take the elevator, I'm rung. In fact, in his eyes I incarnate the disease, and it scares him. In larger companies, sick people are suspected of being underperforming or of losing the morale of other employees.

In the evening, I go home, infinitely sad. When I tell my husband that I'm fired, he says, "Do not worry, I'm here. At two we are stronger. Beautiful sentence! But that does not reassure me completely. At the bottom of me, a little voice repeats to me that it does not have the shoulders to support me. I do not let it appear. All I clearly remember is having, at that moment, begun to feel overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness . Fifteen days later, Nicolas, as it often happens, is traveling abroad. He works for a multinational specialized in marketing. At the end of the day, I try to reach him on his mobile, but he is off. I call at the hotel, but he is not in his room either. I leave a message to the standard and I wait, staring at the ceiling of my living room.

A horrible night. Hour after hour, I feel more and more annihilated. Can not find sleep. I'm scavenging some unconvincing scenarios to find explanations for this silence, but deep within me, I know it's just a way to protect myself, not to suffer too much. The truth is blinding.

The next morning I finally managed to reach my man. He is in a hurry, does not have time to give me an explanation and just tells me, "I have to talk to you," before hanging up. The problem is that he does not return until three days later. Three days of nightmare, with a certainty looping in my head: " There is someone else in his life . On his return, I press him with questions. He does not answer any. I harass him. His silence makes me mad. I persist. Finally, after a few hours, he spits out the piece: "I met a girl, but she does not count. "

This admission marks the beginning of six months during which he begins to navigate between home and home. He claims that he loves us both and that he can not choose between her and me. "You are the woman of my life, I will never be able to leave you," he says forcefully. A few days later, he packs his bags and confesses that he does not love me anymore. And then he comes back. And leave. And come back. I, destroyed, I suffer this situation, unable to put it out, persuaded that I will die, my cancer is not cured (it's true: I'm just in remission), I'm alone in the world. I hate myself, I do not recognize myself anymore, I even start digging into his things. I become a caricature of a jealous woman, inhabited by emotions and feelings unknown until now. One evening, in his mobile, I discovered a series of photos, and I realize that I know his mistress of view. She worked on campaigns for my advertising agency. What a shame ! Just out of my cancer, my job at 45, I feel weak and tired. My husband may well disappear when he wants, I resign myself to his comings and goings. When he is there, he has at least the gift of comforting me. When he says, "I love you," I want to believe him so much that I believe him.

My friends are scandalized. By dint of hearing them advise me to throw him out, I find the strength to go to a lawyer to ask for a divorce . It's fast: a year later we are officially separated. That day, in court, we did not even speak to each other, and the most extraordinary thing in this story is that I never saw this man again, I never heard from him again. him. While we are living in the same environment.

I am without a husband but also unemployed . My phone, which used to ring all day long, does not vibrate at all. I go as far as to check that it is not broken down ... But no, it works very well, and the synthetic voice invariably rehearsed the same depressing tale: "You have no new message. In truth, I understand that cancer is scary. Even though it's a disease that everyone knows is not contagious, others think you're going to be bad for them. It is absurd, of the order of superstition, but - I can testify it - it is a generalized reaction: those who before you courted you flee and abandon you without any care. One of my colleagues, with whom I had worked every day for six years in a row and who had become a friend - at least I thought so - did not even phone me or send a word.

After a very difficult year, one day, a competing agency of mine contacted me. Against all odds, I am hired as director of a prestigious service. Even in my wildest dreams I would not have dared to believe it. I guess I was able to recognize some skills. Overnight, my phone is back in service, more than ever people congratulate me, ask for my news. The same ones who had brutally disappeared magically reappear to express the pain they felt for me and a whole lot of interested flatteries. Such is life ! I'm not fooled, but it's a good thing. Only downside: in our little environment, I constantly meet the woman for whom my ex-husband left me. We behave like two rival females: she looks at me, I measure her, without a word but with a charge of explosive aggressiveness.

Last month, I receive an email by which she proposes me a meeting, if I wish it. In the second, I answer: "OK. What does she have to say to me? She took my husband and made me suffer so much, I want to understand who this woman is. We agree to meet in a cafe. She arrives on time. From the outset I learn that she broke with Nicolas a long time ago, that she did not know that I was sick and that now she hopes that we can meet without animosity. Who would have thought that someday a woman like her would like to become my friend? I am not naive: I know that she too came to ask me for work. Like so many others. It's incredible…

The next day, she sends me an SMS: "I am surprised, I did not imagine that you can be so close to me. I never answered him. Saved from my cancer, full of energy, I left in the reconstruction of my life, savoring my revenge and my happiness to be a free woman again.

Send us a summary of your story. If it suits us, we will collect your testimony. Published stories are paid.

Contact : by email, [email protected] or, by mail, Beatrix de l'Aulnoit, MC, 10, boulevard des -Frères-Voisin, 92792 Issy-les-Moulineaux cedex 9.