A sub caring for her Dom/bf in his time of need

Hi all! This isn't an "I need advice" post, but rather an attempt to share my story with you. To start, I have to go back to December 2018. My Dom and I found each other through FetLife and we met irl a couple months after chatting through text. We instantly fell into a Ds dynamic and it was great, I am very masochistic and he is a sadist. Sexually we are Ds, and vanilla life we were originally just friends until we ultimately fell for each other. We became monogamous after a couple attempts to bring in other females and it not working for me. He said we'd close the dynamic and I was honestly amazed that this guy cared enough about me to do so. His ability to deal with my bratiness, my babygirl side, and my anxiety was something I'd only dreamt of in a Dom, and he's honestly the best Dom and boyfriend Ive ever had. He could beat the shit 9ut 9f me when I needed it, then turn around and bathe me, tuck me into bed and snuggle me in the next. We could turn off Ds at any moment and talk shit to each other and just banter like best friends. It's kind of perfect, and it still freaks me out how great we are together. Okay enough mushiness. Now for the kinda shitty part.Fast forward to last November. He had a seizure while driving a semi for work, crashed(he was luckily okay aside from soreness and no other vehicles were involved) and his MRI results showed two tumors in his brain. Since then, it's been one brain surgery to remove one tumor(the other is inoperable), 6 months of radiation, and a year of chemo that he is now 5 months through. Our Ds dynamic took a backseat at the start of all of this and I am okay with that because I can only imagine how hard it is for him in general dealing with this. So I turned my sub off as much as I can and took on the care taker role. Sex is almost non-existent and Ds as well. It's hard, it's really fucking hard.Once covid hit, I fell into a depression that I couldn't get out of and I was beginning to feel very neglected and overall guilty for wanting Ds back, for wanting any normalization of what we're dealing with. I know that our normal is never going to be what it was and I can't expect to have a normal until maybe after chemo is over, and even then it will never be the same. In trying to cope with this, I began feeling like a burden and instead of talking to him. I would bottle up my problems until I'd explode, then isolate because I didn't want to hurt him, and repeat. I didn't want to cause him more stress so I began to self destruct in my attempts to hide my feelings.After an immense melt down over him playing video games too much instead of hanging out with me( I literally was above my body watching this, wondering who is this girl going insane for him trying to distract himself from his shitty reality) I recognized what I was doing to myself and in turn, what I was doing to him was not healthy even though I was trying to keep myself from stressing him out more. My attempts to be strong for both of us resulted in me being weak for myself. I am now going to therapy and the therapist had said something that really hit a chord in me; "a lot of people with high compassion for others end up lacking self compassion, and they end up feeling like a burden when they need it." They made me realize that all the while I'd felt weak for my mental health decline when I actually am incredibly strong and just needed help and was refusing to ask for it. In short, I have been taking steps in bettering my communication with my partner and I have been forcing myself to do small things for myself. I've just started taking a low dose of anti depressants, it's been a week and I'm starting to feel like a human again. I'm getting into ariel yoga, going further with shibari self suspension, and am trying to see my friends more in safe ways that don't jeopardize his immune system.It's a long road ahead. I am confident that my mental state will get better, and I'm feeling more proud of myself for being strong through all of this instead of pointing out my moments of weakness. I don't know what prompted me to share this now, but I need to. I want people to know that you're not alone and to reach out for help when you need it. Don't push things down because you don't want to be a burden because your happiness is just as important as anybody else's. via /r/BDSMAdvice https://ift.tt/3k8mahh