‘I think you have enough belly fat to make two (boobs).’
Words I never imagined I would hear uttered to me nonchalantly. There’s been a lot of that these days.
I wish I would have confirmed just how many boobs could be made because honestly two seems like I’m being low balled. I guess this is why people recommend getting a second opinion.
I’ve been to so many appointments lately I barely know what else was said in this particular appointment aside from me cracking a joke that I was getting ‘boob mugshots’ after I well… got boob mugshots. There is no other way to describe it. This doctor was 100% professional and well-mannered and clearly very talented, but all that said, so much of this experience is just so fucking weird and uncomfortable. Also side note re weird and uncomfortable, this medical office was playing ‘party like it’s 1999’ in the waiting room and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Anyway…
Between this and the last post, grief and depression were heavy. It was so hard to even make sense of how to make decisions on my treatment plan. Pick one path and you’re signing up for 3 to 10 years of treatment afterwards. Three to ten?? Pick an alternative path to possibly avoid long-term treatments and you start having conversations about build-a-boobs and how attached you are to your nipples.
I still don’t know exactly what my path will look like. I don’t know how many surgeries I’ll have or how many years I’ll be facing this. I only know the next step. I didn’t land on it because it was clearly the best choice; every path had tradeoffs I never imagined I’d have to consider. And making the choice doesn’t offer any assurance for what exactly my future treatment will look like. Despite that, landing here has brought me to a strange sense of zen.
Part of it is just relief over the idea of getting this thing OUT of my body!!! I can literally feel it. This little nagging stinging… slowly trying to kill me little asshole… taunting me as I agonized over this impossible decision day after day. Gaaaahhhh!
Anyway, back to how I’m super zen now… The biggest sense of relief is actually just in leaning into being present. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t take credit for this forced enlightenment as much as I’d like to. It is a product of pure overwhelm — I have to be present because I simply can’t handle more than right now, right now. But it’s also teaching me how much better served I am in reserving my energy for only what is most important and only what is actually in front of me.
I only have to figure out the immediate next step because that is all that is in front of me anyway. The parameters and the choices we have are always changing, I could not have learned that more clearly in the last month. Looking too far ahead is merely a vain attempt at control we don’t actually have. Oddly, it’s freeing rather than frightening. And interestingly, it makes priorities that much clearer too. It doesn’t make any sense to wait to give energy to things that make me happy.
This silly little blog is just that. For years my creative itch has been largely ignored. And anyone who has that itch knows it never goes away, it just nags at you until you let it out. But for so long, since I also suffer from the mental illness known as capitalism, I would get stuck thinking whatever I created had to also eventually be harnessed into something productive or profitable. And so nothing happened. I didn’t have fun with it, I didn’t fail, I just didn’t. And that’s dumb. So the whole intent with the first post was to start and finish a creative thing in one sitting without over-thinking. And while that might seem simple, it was a huge challenge and it only took a couple posts before I started to over-think again. I wrote half a post between this one and the last. And parts of it are really well-written. But I never finished it and I got in my head and I started to think about why I was really doing this and how it could become more organized or useful or blah blah blah and bottom line: nothing happened.
I don’t know exactly what the rest of the summer will look like and that makes me really scared. But I do know I’ll be prioritizing fresh air and laughing and messy half finished creativity and, for all of that, I am excited. Basically, I’m gonna party like it’s 1999 — but also stay present or whatever. I dunno, I had to call back to it somehow.
Leave a Reply