i can't explain all these feelings that are coming up after the fact. i'm more scared now than i was before the surgery. i suppose this is one of those highly-medicated-for-many-days bad days that i read about on so many other mastectomy blogs. i am not regretting having the surgery at all. i am fully okay with the no nipple thing. i am fascinated, not disgusted, by how things look because i know they will only look better over time. i went out tonight with a sports bra and chicken cutlets (to smooth out my extremely lumpy look); aside from the drain bulges no one would suspect a thing. i'm not even particularly uncomfortable. the pressure, deep breath pain has been replaced with occasional short and sharp (what i assume is) nerve regeneration pain in odd and sometime unidentifiable places. i have no sensation whatsoever on my skin; it's seriously like touching someone else's body.
but then there are these moments (one was an upside-down hair washing moment today) when i find myself crying, in a sobbing and sincere (but pathetic) way, like my heart has been broken. and i can't say exactly why. i was so happy to be feeling clean and self-sufficient in a little way and yet i felt devastated in a way i haven't felt since rory left. and now that i see it written, maybe that's part of it. just like my pregnancy with lorenzo i did something that is strictly female (but that ultimately reads as strong and brave (bleh hate that stfu) and NOT feminine) that required help but that could also not be adequately explained or shared to or with my partner. and it scares me that like rory, danny is feeling burdened and isolated at the same time, or inadequate and overwhelmed. and ready to bolt. i keep telling myself that i have no real evidence to support that, it's not his style, he complains when he's unhappy instead of stuffing it down and suffering in silence (god there is never silence around here). but fuck if a man can leave you with a three month old a man can certainly leave you after you've had your tits chopped off, especially for a woman with tits that are already beautiful and come with nipples.
on the other hand i reason that it could be the opposite, that this scared him. that he does love me. that he's afraid to touch me because he doesn't want to hurt me. that he wants me to be strong and okay and in his stubborn man way he wants to be the one that can teach me how to be that way, because he hasn't figured out yet that I AM strong and okay. and shit if he didn't actually water the lawn today... please let it be the latter.
see? i look human when bathed, clothed and not high!