Moving forward

One thing I hate (and love) about being a writer: your best thoughts and ideas come to you when you’re lying in bed, desperately trying to fall asleep (sans Ambien, hence, “desperately trying to fall asleep”) and you know, just KNOW, you have to jump out of bed and get them down on paper (or computer) before you lose them. So here I am, seven minutes past midnight, with my pink eye mask on my forehead. Blogging. Because it’s been nearly a month and apparently I forgot I’ve got lots to say.

Life has been moving forward. Very much forward and very happily. I love my new job. I ran my first 5K (in under 30 minutes!) POST breast cancer, and have another one coming up in a few weeks. I baked a pie. We’re going to Florida for Memorial Day weekend. And we finally booked our honeymoon to Paris and Italy. We leave June 28.

But perhaps my biggest news is that I’ll be sharing my story, live and in public, in front of (tens? Or hundreds?) of people June 5 in Washington, D.C. as part of The Moth’s and Philips’ “Getting it off our chests” show, where three breast cancer survivors – me being one of them – will share their stories. I’ve been working for weeks on my story with one of the women from The Moth. Basically I will be speaking for 10 minutes, by myself. I can’t tell you too much about what I will talk about, but from reading Pink and Pearls I am sure you can get the gist. My story. My journey. Planning my wedding while coping with breast cancer. Where I am today. How I survived. How I am SURVIVING.

Since the wedding I have been about 98 percent less scared of getting breast cancer in the other breast. Most of that is because I know I’m getting the other breast removed. So when I’m lying in bed desperately trying to fall asleep, sometimes my mind goes back to that day in April of last year when I found the lump. I re-live it like it was a traumatizing day. Which it was. I reply it, slowly in my mind, trying to remember how I almost missed it, and exactly how I felt when I found out. “What was that?” And I don’t know if I ever told anyone this before, or even wrote it before, but the moment I found it I started crying. Right there in the shower. I told myself the crying was panic. I panic all the time. But I think I cried because I knew. So I think back to that moment and get scared all over again. And then I remind myself: I am CHOOSING to never go through that panic again. I am getting another mastectomy. Does that mean I’ll never get breast cancer again? No. Does that mean I’ll never be looking for lumps? No. But it does lower my chances and it does give me peace of mind. I try to remember that when I dread my next surgery – scheduled for July 27. When instead of one rock (tissue expander) under my chest, I’ll have two. So now I pretend to “savor” the moments where I have no expanders. Nothing on the right side. Just still ripping and tearing pain when I stretch my chest or move my arm a certain way. But the pain I feel today is nothing compared to what I’ll feel following July 27. Nothing. But then I think back to when I found the lump. NOTHING in the world compares to THAT pain. The pain of panic.

I tell myself I have much to revel in before July 27. Our honeymoon, for example. I’ll be sipping wine in the rolling hills of Tuscany. Speaking (or trying to speak) Francais at a tiny little café overlooking the Arc de Triumph. A real scene? Maybe. Perhaps more beautiful than I could ever imagine? Absolutely.

The thing is, the breast cancer is still so much a part of my life. I am so honored to be able to share my story next month as part of The Moth’s storytelling event. Raise awareness about breast cancer in young women. Yes, it can happen to them. But yes, they can be OK. Because I AM OK, and that is my message. But it’s still a process. More than a year later. And I know it will continue to be a process. Breast cancer takes something from you. Something you may spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself you didn’t need in the first place. Because what else can you do? Admit you DID need it? I tell myself I am still a woman. I tell myself, even sometimes, that I am MORE a woman now, without one breast, than I was before all this. Because I became stronger and because I learned to fight and because I learned to love myself and appreciate life in a new way. And that takes strength and courage. I tell myself these things, and yes, I do believe them. But at the end of the day there’s still something missing. No matter how strong you are.

Our culture and our society recognize women as having certain things that MAKE them women. You know what I mean. And at 27, that’s hard to ignore. You have to fight the message. That you can still be a woman without breasts. And perhaps the only thing that helps is knowing you’re not alone. That other young women were sold short. That other young women had to say goodbye, without wanting to, to something they relied on to make them women – to make them whole. But how comforting is that? Knowing breast cancer keeps taking and taking and taking. Even breast cancer survivors who keep their breasts. I still have one of mine, and yet I feel like I don’t. I know it’s going away, and frankly, I can’t wait. Is that terrible? I actually don’t WANT it anymore because I feel like it’s a ticking time bomb. How do women move on, with or without breasts, after breast cancer? Is this something I’ll be figuring out forever? Without them, do you feel less of a woman? With them, do you feel, at any minute, they could turn on you again? It’s possible I’ll feel differently after my expansion is done and I’m fully reconstructed with two implants. No breasts. Just implants. I have to imagine I’ll feel differently. Part of my journey has been realizing I don’t always feel the same way twice. I can only grow in my thoughts. That doesn’t mean they become better or worse. It just means they become … different.

And I guess tonight, thank goodness I didn’t take Ambien, or else I never would have written this post.

Goodnight all!