I'm grappling with the new truth about my physical self: I don't have breasts anymore. I can put my hands against my chest and feel all of my ribs. When I looked down at my toes in the shower, the ends of my rib cage stuck out farther than any other part of me. It is too strange to be shocking, and too shocking to be scary, and too scary to be sad. I keep finding my hands stealing along my ribs, as if I could find my breasts there by accident. I look incredibly tiny now, with my little pixie hair and just my narrow ribcage. The woman who altered my wedding dress decided I must be English, because I have such big boobs and a narrow little ribcage. Had. My shirts hang straight down, now.
Even after everything I've been through this year, I never hated my breasts. Lots of women with breast cancer say they want them chopped off, or call them the evil twins, or just pour hate into them. I couldn't hate them, because they were a part of me - a visible, tangible, obvious part. Not terribly useful, and with a rotten set of instructions, but mine.
I wore my favorite shirt of all time to the hospital on Thursday. That shirt has been dancing in Chicago and New York, on summer dates with Zack, worn under jackets to work and over tight jeans to parties. It fit my curves just so, and I always felt beautiful when I wore it. It is missing a button, and the edges are frayed, and it doesn't have the same give that it used to. In fact, it has gotten pretty worn out. So, really, no-one would know but me that I look beautiful in that shirt.
I know that in a few days I'll be feeling better, and it will be time to change out of my jammies and into regular clothes. That will probably be when the strangeness starts to creep into the everyday. When nothing fits right, and my reflection in the mirror doesn't match what I imagine it should be. When I look around at other women and see curves in all the right places but don't have them myself.
I just have to remember that I know I am beautiful, even if what everyone else sees is just a ratty old shirt.
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7 comments:
You are and will always be beautiful, Angel.
I'd be happy to share some of my curves with you. I've got plenty to go around. My aesthetic is less "ratty old shirt" and more "hungry hungry hippo".
You still look prettier than me. Don't think I won't keep trying.
It's okay to mourn them- I think it's probably even good for you in some way. So take your time. Remember how big I was in college? Remember my boobs? I've been losing that weight for years now, and I still can't get used to how I look, nor do I really see it. A very different kind of change, I know, but it shows that bodies and minds are linked in some weird ways. Especially when they are both our own. I think if we are honest, a lot of times we acknowledge the primacy of internal beauty in others more easily than in ourselves. For me, you have never been, nor will ever be, a ratty old shirt - you are the most beautiful, unique, rare, and COMFORTABLE silk kimono I've ever met.
I think everyone following this blog knows envy, sadness, and beauty in different forms. I completely agree with Jemma that we often acknowledge beauty in others more easily than in ourselves. Still, that doesn't change the fact that you are beautiful, inside and out, no matter what.
I'm really looking forward to seeing you this week!! xoxoxo
I can only tell you what my mom told me when I was a 13 year old with pimples and braces which is that beauty is on the inside and the people who see inside are the ones who matter. The ones looking at the outside (where you are also beautiful, BTW) are of little consequence.
LB
Hey Lynn --
I can't imagine you less than beautiful.....you look more like those lovely pictures you sent me than I will, I think (my tummy's not quiiiite so flat.) However, for those days when you want curves under your favorite shirt, check out this link a friend sent me.... Apparently these work better than breast forms....
http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall05/PATTbits.html
:-D
PS -- Keep the "ratty old shirt." Any shirt that has earned that title is probably an old comforting friend. It's probably not as ratty as you think, either. Ever read The Velveteen Rabbit? It's just had some of its original stuff loved off.....
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