16 July 2012

Glaring Reminders


Caution: This post is pretty raw.

Something bothers me.  A lot. Everyday.  It bothers me so much that I expend a ton of energy ignoring it.  I don't like to see it, feel it or think about it, and yet everyday I do.  Impossible to escape, it hits me in the face time and time again.  I'm just doing what I do, getting dressed, getting in the shower, changing into a bathing suit and there they are, I see them in the mirror - my hideous fake boobs.

I often wonder if I did the right thing by having my reconstruction.  On the one hand, I look normal with clothes on.  My rationale was that with foobs, I wouldn't have "I HAD CANCER" tattooed across  my chest.  Boob-less women are not normal, they are freakish curiosities.  They exude asexuality and garner pity and I certainly didn't want that, for me or for my kids to witness.  A significant part of my reason to have the reconstruction was to shelter my kids from having a 'weird' mom.  One that would be the brunt of their peers' taunts - "Oh Yah?  Well your mom is a titless wonder!!!"

On the other hand, they are hideous.  They revoltingly contort when my pec muscles are engaged.  Gashes of red scars stretch from one side to the other, from my left, numb armpit, past the misshapen 'corners' in the middle to the other semi-numb armpit.  These scars feel bad.  I'm supposed to be rubbing scar cream into them but touching them gives me the heebie-jeebies.  It creeps me out.  The foobs are lopsided, two different shapes.  There are flaps of tissue under my arms by my ribcage that bulge out. These were previously pulled forward when they were attached to my original boobs.  Not any more.  Why wouldn't the surgeon have removed them?   They actually hang under my arms.

So I play the game of trying to imagine how it would be better if I hadn't had the reconstruction.  I certainly would have had an easier convalescence after the first surgery.  Maybe only four weeks in bed instead of six?  I wouldn't have had the second surgery and so I'd be a little further along on my fitness, instead of having had to take a break from my running training program for six weeks in March/April.  My pecs wouldn't have been stretched out and compromised.  I still can't do a push-up.

Most disturbing to me is the incongruence between clothed and naked.  I look totally normal in clothes. I look so un-normal naked.  Freakish. Alien. Repulsive. I suspect that if I didn't have the reconstruction, I'd feel more authentic.  And my outward persona would better match how I feel inside - ripped apart and scarred.