ME

the one where even my transcendental crisis is pathetic

the one where i unravel myself as a navel gazing, compulsive bitch. the one where i'm a histrionic slut. the one where i acknowledge that i'm feeding the beast and i like it. the one where i can't commit. the one where i act out of fear - forever and ever. the one where i start blogging again but it's trite. the one where you point out my flaws and i'm defensive. the one where i try on your glasses and live in someone else's skin. the one where you're too self involved to notice. the one where i cop out and free associate. the one where i run away forever. the one where i fuck someone in costa rica in a bed of money. the one where my kids point out my flaws. the one where i've die before i go there. the one where i am reborn, a woman. the one where i send and receive secret messages. the one where i assign meaning to meaningless things. the one where i'm a muse. the one where i miss my old saggy tits. the one where i reimagine myself as i was at 15. the one where i snow my psychiatrist. the one where you dress me down. the one where i show up naked. the one where i'm drunk at nine am. the one where i miss somewhere i haven't been before. the one where i use old formats as a new crutch. the one where my customer service sucks. the one where i'm better than you. the one where bodies don't mean anything. the one where i cry out for you. the one where you don't notice me. the one where my life is an exercise in self control. the one where i judge you. the one where i make the right choice. the one where i can't even commit to a tense. the one where i assign value to valueless things. the one where i listen to red house painters until my ears bleed and i cease to exist. the one where there's flowers in my drink. the one where i remember it's just a body. the one where i realize it doesn't really matter. the one where i press my face against the speaker. the one where i tell a lie. the one where i eat the note you left in my purse. the one where your face burns red. the one where i'm in a room where all i feel is the cold that you left. the one where i blame you for the position i'm in. the one where i abandon symbolism forever. the one where you've already stopped reading. the one where sex is a crutch. the one where i'm the illustrated woman. the one where i dream you've beaten me senseless. the one where you bear witness. the one where i was doing fine without it. the one where i made different choices. the one where i divorce myself of all of this. the one where i shave my head. the one where everything waxes and wanes. the one where i'm only tangentially here. the one where i'm sea glass. the one where i can't even right now. the one where you paint me as i am. the one where i the one where i the one where i i i i i return to navel gazing afterall.

all things go, all things go

tomorrow is my 32nd birthday. i feel more authentic moving deeper into my 30s. and somehow, i can don't dare to look deep into this blog at the assertions i made in years past. this year will be my year of wealth. this year i'll be a better mom. this year i'll nail rory. this year i'll stop punishing myself for things. this year i'll be healthier. so in my 32nd year, let me just be less afraid of things changing. or not changing. let me be where i am.


three weeks post-op or is anyone tired of foob pics yet? as lorenzo would say (loudly, in public): tough titties <--see what i did there?

so, it has been a week of ups and downs. one moment i'm thrilled with free new bras (one in particular that fits just perfectly), the next moment my incisions are sore and all i want to do is ace bandage myself and sleep. overall i'd say i'm more aesthetically pleased than i was last week. at this very moment, looking at pictures, i'm *so* content with the size. more projection would have been too much and less would have made me mourn my expanders (weird, i know). and i knew these foobs, as with all breasts, would be sisters, not twins. they most certainly are not twins.

i've been feeling emotional about this whole step, so much more so than i expected. it wasn't until i was talking to mara earlier in the week that i realized why. there was so much anticipation in the first (bmx) stage. there were weekly appointments for expansions and countdowns to exchange time. and now the exchange is done and they're lovely (but not perfect) and it feels over. and i don't know how to transition into someone who just loves her new foobs and isn't constantly medicalizing them. the truth is, i'm so much more comfortable in a doctor's office than i am in a salon. i remember the last day in clinic D when i finished my hodgkins treatment. it felt to me like being dumped. there was something so anticlimactic and devastating about spending all time/energy on one task and then having my oncologists say, yeah, we don't need to see you for six months. this feels similar, but not nearly so severe. to be honest, i am someone who has a very difficult time just living in the present. i am always leaning forward with my arms outstretched towards something in the not too distant future. i carry an actual paper date book in my purse and love flipping forward to see what's coming up (even though i also have an iphone). i have countdown clocks for things spectacular and mundane alike. i've worked to beat back over-planning and worry, to surrender control in the past five years. but certainly, this mastectomy was a huge act of control wasn't it? in this case, it's to help me stay healthy, but boy is it easy to fall back into old emotional habits.

starting to calm down a bit (well, not the veins. they get all excitable when anyone even *thinks* about my foobs.) i think the right side (my right side) is dropping a bit faster than the left. ah, go with the flow right foob. always just trying to do what's best.  not even particularly smug anymore. ALB will not sink into its pocket quite yet. trouble. i didn't intend this ALB scar picture to be artsy, i'm just bad at self photography (danny is worse though). i'm curious to see where the scars are at once they've softened... see, like lots of other women with foobs, i can go braless in a dress with zero support. and since i have no nipples, i can even choose a flimsy fabric. to demonstrate the closer positioning and *slightly* more natural look of these foobs here i am in a bra that i wore during expansions. overall, prettttty satisfied. ;)

the one where i'm stealing wifi outside my grandparents' house while they're out of town to avoid going home - in my defense, their yard is amazing

i'm under the (probably) false impression today that my new breasts will make me unstoppable in every aspect of my life (the *perfect* ones i will have, not these rocks). i'm vacillating between exhausted and stupidly over-the-top confident. my sense of time is alternately stretching and contracting. my surgery was a little over three weeks ago and it feels both an eternity and yesterday. i'm shocked that i'm so incredibly mobile and energetic a lot of the time. i'm frustrated that ALB isn't healing like the other side and i can't swim. i'm mystified that not a single one of my bras fits and it's not just for un-smooshability reasons. i'm over-sharing with neighbors, a lot. i have a major crush on my plastic surgeon (who has a wife named celeste and a daughter named parker, no kidding.) i feel like i'm in the middle of some hormonal revolution. still having memory problems and the occasional meltdowns but it's balanced out with naps and physical therapy wherein my PT tries to murder me through massage of my armpits.

speaking of armpits, i can feel my pec muscles stretching there but not so much across my chest. ants crawling under my skin sensation in/on my breasts/pecs/idunno very once in a while. itching on the inside, if that makes sense. absolutely zero sensation to touch or temperature on my skin. dr. bates had me ice the left side and i watched the ice melt from the heat of my skin but i could feel nothing except some referred sensation down my arm to my fingers. bizarre. pain in my ribs once in a while where the expanders are poking me still. i can hardly stand the time between expansions. it's a relief actually. physically and emotionally.

bring on the pain

this sounds strange but i wish this hurt more, physically. my emotions aren't matching up with how my body feels. and my emotions are all about the wrong things. i would rather be mourning the loss of my nipples or my natural breasts. i would rather say i'm looking down shamefully at these scars that will always be here or that i feel like less of a woman. i would rather that i have no sensation in my skin. but like i said before, this wasn't an erogenous zone due to radiation anyway and i don't care. truthfully, i look down in awe at these amazing transformations - day by day - and feel proud and empowered. (this feels like a pregnancy, the nesting, the watching things grow. this doesn't feel like dying.) but i'm crying all the time. i know depression; it's not this. it feels hormonal but how can it be? stop telling me i'm sad about my boobs. just punch me in the stitches and make me hurt on the outside so this makes sense to me.

the weepies

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.

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see? i look human when bathed, clothed and not high!