Cancer is ‘my payback’: Teddi Mellencamp breaks silence on affair with horse trainer

Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave attends the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation's 50th Annual Gracie Awards at the Beverly Wilshire. Photo / Getty Images

Teddi Mellencamp fears her cancer is payback for the hurt she caused other people.

The reality TV star split from her husband Edwin Arroyave - the father of her kids Slate, 12, Cruz, 10, and Dove, 5, - shortly before she was told her stage four melanoma had spread to her brain and lungs this year and the pair put their divorce plans on hold so Arroyave could support her through treatment.

Mellencamp has now given an emotional interview in which she expressed her fear that getting cancer is “payback” for the way her marriage ended. During an appearance on the Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast, she explained: “I’ve never talked about it [the end of my marriage] at all, just because of the kids, and I’ve never wanted anybody to have a guarantee [of] whether it happened or didn’t happen, but what I can say is: Did I do things that hurt other people? Yes.

“To this day, does it still hurt my heart and I wonder if that’s why it got cancer? Yes, like it was my payback. Nothing goes without payment, I guess.”

Mellencamp was rumoured to have been unfaithful to her husband during her marriage, and she admits her mistakes caused a lot of hurt.

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She went on to say: “Not only do you have yourself, you have your significant other, your kids, the other person’s significant other, their kids. I mean, so many people are hurt in the wreckage. The wreckage doesn’t happen on its own.”

The TV star went on to insist she wasn’t well during that time of her life and was “looking for comfort”.

She added: “I think I was so sick during that stage - ’cause remember how I told you there was months of headaches and stuff like that - I was looking for comfort anywhere I could get it.

“I felt so much pain. I felt so sick. I didn’t go to the doctors. I just felt some certain kind of way, and the pain was so much that I had gotten to the point of, like, almost hating waking up in the morning, which I had never been that kind of person ...

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“But I do think a bunch of things happened in my life all around the same time, and I had zero control of any of them. Like, I just was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.”

Mellencamp also confessed she wants to maintain a good friendship with Arroyave despite all that’s happened between them, saying: “I just want him to be happy, and I want our kids to be happy, and I want us to be able to have a good friendship and relationship, and I don’t want to do anything to hurt him.”