Love and breasts, scars and self-image.

After being on cloud nine Sunday I free fell until impact with terra firma midday Monday.

I had a dermatology appointment. Going into it I was most worried about having to out myself to the doctor and how that would be handled. That proved to be a non-issue. But something else wasn’t a non-issue.

I was referred by my endo who was concerned about a mole near my right clavicle. That proved to not be notable, but three others concerned the doctor. We discussed the options and will be proceeding appropriately (and partially have - one was suitable for a less invasive biopsy method that could be done at that appointment; the other two require the more involved surgical biopsy.)

In the appointment I did what I always do - focus on what needs to be done and making the right choice, forcing my emotions into a little corner in the back of my mind. In the moments when the doctor and nurse had walked out to get the materials they needed to perform the biopsy I tried to ask my wife to hold my hand but I couldn’t make the words come out. I could feel tears beginning to well-up in my eyes and I knew that making myself speak would lead to the tears flooding out but I needed to stay strong for a few minutes more.

The biopsy was performed and I was given care instructions along with the form to deal with checking out and having the other’s scheduled. The doctor and the nurse left and the moment the door latched I fell apart. I managed to pull myself back together enough to deal with checking out (mercifully short as the person at the counter could not deal with the scheduling but didn’t need me to stay around to have it addressed.) In the elevator my wife tried to reassure me. I touched my finger to her lips to ask her to stop because it was all I could do to hold myself together. When I closed the car door I began sobbing.

It wasn’t about the health risk, because I knew it to be low and the options good. However vain, it was about how my body looks, how I relate to my body, and my view of my own body. I’ve spent a long time - decades - dealing with being what everyone else demanded (and even forced) I be, and that included how my body existed. The past three years brought that into sharp focus, particularly in all the times I laid myself on tables for various medical and cosmetic procedures that I needed to have my body on my terms, plus the hours seated in a therapist’s office to get the permission to have access to some of those treatments.

In this there was a particular element of my breasts. My relationship with breasts has been difficult, in no small part due to so many social images, and my own body, i.e. my own breasts, was not exempt from this. This past May I had a huge personal breakthrough: that even with still needing to have certain changes to my body I have come to like and love my body, including my breasts as they are. And now I will have that unwillingly changed.

The procedure will leave a scar. It will not be the first scar I have, nor the largest - both of those distinctions go to one my brother caused early in my life (under my arm, where it is hidden, and it now looks more like a stretch-mark) but it will be the most prominent. The location, on the upper-left of my right breast, means that wearing clothing that shows my breasts at all will show the scar. A part of my self-image and love of my body will be excised with that flesh.

I know that I am doing what is best for me, and that having many more years, particularly now that I am truly living, is the most important. I know that, like my skin, my self-image will heal in time, and I will be able to again enjoy full acceptance of my body. But, in the short term, neither of those facts mitigate the pain.

I am strong (or, as one dear friend once called me, “a tough broad”) but that doesn’t prevent us from feeling pain. Instead, I can take that pain and use it to forge my own recovery from it.

I have long wanted to incorporate the Phoenix into my life because I see its myth as describing well my own experiences over the last few years - functionally, the various appointments, examination tables, etc., have been His pyre, and I have emerged from that. I have also been inspired by the combination of very recent experiences of a wonderful friend who used that imagery herself combined with women who have taken a particular step to reclaim their bodies after mastectomies.

Next year, after my body has healed, I shall get upon my breast a tattoo of a Phoenix that incorporates my scar.

In my self-pity yesterday I thought of a photo I took months ago. I won’t link it here, although some who are reading this have seen it. If you’re familiar with the “Cats ‘N’ Racks” photos then you know the format of this one. It was something I did, initially as a silly exercise, but that became empowering for me in a way that is very difficult for me to explain - elements of owning and reclaiming my body. If it then existed my scar would be visible in that photograph, and that thought brought me to tears. I told myself that I would always cherish it as a memory of when I was whole and beautiful. But now I do not see it that way (I will keep it, but that will not be how I see myself.)

I’ve come too far to let this set me back. I will again have my body on my terms. I am and will continue to be beautiful, and to like and love my body.