Discipline

Why has it been so hard, I wonder, to get back in here and do this blogging thing.  I *wanted* to share this experience.  I *needed* to share it.  It's been days and days and days since I blogged.  I publicly wondered why on FB yesterday and received a variety of honest and creative answers.  None of them were right, I've decided.  It's because I don't have the discipline.  Anymore, it feels like I used all of my "let's get this sh!t done" ability in graduate school.  I would like to say I know that isn't true, but if the last 4 or 5 years or so is any indication...  Well...  3 or 4, I guess.  I used to say it was time, or lack thereof.  I never have the "time" for whatever it is that I'm not doing, in that moment.  Lie, lie, lie.  Discipline would have made the time - or at least provided a more honest answer.  The universe gave me all the time I need weeks ago.  Well, three weeks ago, to be exact.  Full right radical mastectomy at 45 in a *very young* (at the time-blog for another day) relationship.  All the time in the world, it gave me.  So THIS is the lesson in this, eh?  Discipline and dedication?  Ugh.  It was so much more entertaining having so many things going on that I could flit from one thing to the next, never staying in one place too long - especially never long enough to *finish* the thing.  Ok...  ok....  I get it.  I'll slow down.

Really, it forced both of us to slow down (ok, short reference to that not-so-new-anymore-relationship).  Maybe it saved us.  Not that we needed saving, but on the flip side of that statement, doesn't everyone?  One of many continually evolving results of this slow down?  I've never felt this strong...  this confident...  this capable...  or this attractive, actually.  I've always known that, for me, confidence - appropriately placed and well-balanced - is sexy.  I've also always considered myself a rather confident person, but I've never really felt "sexy."  And I'm not going all base and carnal and instinct here.  If I say someone is "sexy," I'm really saying they are...  intriguing.  Interesting.  Engaging.  Attractive, but DEFINITELY not just physically.  Magnetic.  Mysterious.  If I call someone sexy, I'm admitting that they have a factor of "irresistible" for me that includes both inner and outer qualities.  Basically, I guess I have to know someone before I can determine if I consider them "sexy" or not.  I've never thought of myself that way.  I've never felt that any of those words described *me.*  Until recently.  Maybe I'm finally getting to know myself a little bit.  Or maybe I've engaged the ultimate self-esteem protective mechanisms~denial and delusion, and someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next year, it will all come crashing down around my head, and I will look in the mirror, finally seeing the 'mutilated freak' that many have seen in their own post-mastectomy mirrors.  It's a possibility.  In some dimension, I suppose.  But I've looked in the mirror *a lot* over the last three weeks.  I've taken pictures and looked at them.  I've even zoomed in to see the changes up close.  And unless I've *always* been a mutilated freak and just never known it, that's just not what I see.  I see me.  And I like what I see.

I know many women who have had to go through a mastectomy would not agree.  And that's perfectly fine.  I do hope not to be judged by any of my new BC family, but it could happen.  I grabbed the "mutilated freak" phrase from a breast cancer discussion board.  A post-surgery woman wrote something to the effect of, "of course I am wearing a prosthetic until I can have the reconstruction - I would *never* leave the house looking like a mutilated freak..."  I have chosen not to wear a prosthetic.  I will have a reconstruction, when it is medically feasible, but...  I'm almost going to miss this step - this stage.  I like me more now than I ever have in my life.  But if my breast wasn't part of my self-esteem calculation before surgery, it shouldn't be now, either.  Basically, it shouldn't matter what my chest looks like or if I have the reconstruction.  Hmmmm.  I like looking at it that way.

But that still leave thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands - of women out there that are *not* comfortable with how they look post-boob-removal.  I'm not even going to speculate on that.  There are *so* many reasons for that, and none of the reasons are really my concern.  I did read an article recently, though, that got me thinking about this issue of body, health, and self-esteem.  At Salon.com, I ran across an article called "You Don't Have to Dance at Your Mastectomy."  It's about an OB/Gyn who asked her OR - and the entire nation - to dance with her for 5 minutes before laying down on the operating table to have a double mastectomy.  As the author points out, it's the kind of feel-good, oh-I-could-never-be-that-strong-but-thank-god-someone-is kind of story that eventually makes it way onto Lifetime or the Sundance Channel, inspiring reporters covering to quippingly ask "What do you do before a double mastectomy?  Dance, of course!"  The author's response to that answer?  "Blow me."

I can definitely see how most people would not dance into *any* surgery involving the word cancer.  But I can also see how some would.  I might even venture to say "have to."  But just as a dancing mastectomy shouldn't worry about how others in similar situations behave, shaking, scared, crying mastectomies shouldn't compare themselves to the dancers.  I'm willing to bet~largely based on personal experience~that the dancers have their own hidden demons, they are just different than the ones that make you shake and cry and freak out in the face of cancer.  They are the demons that make some people dance, instead.  But don't let them fool you.  They are still demons.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/08/you_dont_have_to_dance_at_your_mastectomy/