I saw an image. It’s August. My head is spinning.
The image is of the famous statue of Juliet in Verona, Italy. The caption: “to be a woman….” People have nearly bore a hole in the bronze from touching her. This symbolizing so much.
Call me dramatic……… but the reality cannot be ignored. Look at her. Look at what it represents. The objectification. The taking. The display of disrespect. For me, it’s all of these things, yes. (It happens to other statues in other places and on other parts, too. All the same, my point stands.) And even though they can’t comment, the messages still exist.
There was another message for me from that image and the caption, though. One that won’t hit everyone the same way it hit me. “To be a woman…” I did take offense in the way some may assume I did, but my offense is extra. I’m offended by the public display of disregard AND by breast cancer. What wickedness. Breast amputation is vicious. Radical hysterectomy is wretched. Losing hair is brutal. Being forced to gain weight to survive it all only to be stuck with weight impossible to lose because of the side effects of said surviving is all a cruel irony. Reconstructing to maintain societal norms (not knowing that’s actually what was happening until it was too late) and then having to completely deconstruct because it all only made me sicker, what is even is that sh*tshow.… Breast cancer has forced me to redefine everything about being a woman. By stripping me of everything ‘woman.’ Without my consent.
Some days I feel less than.
Some days, it’s empowering to redefine.
Most days I’m floating somewhere in the middle.
But every day, I have been forced to live different. And that truth is hard…no matter how I have had to make sense of it to accept it.
It’s August, which for me is significant. 7 is somehow supposed to be some important milestone. I don’t feel like I thought I’d feel, though. I don’t know where I stand with much of anything. I want for so much but it feels just out of reach in a dense fog of nothing-makes-sense. Does it all matter or does nothing matter, actually, I don’t know anymore. What is it, that I want to be everything and nothing? I wake up confused that I wake up, still I feel this, every morning. Is this the epitome of healthy existence or is this the reflection of extreme dysfunction? Who even am I.
Cancer changes me. It changes the way I see how I fit into things. This anniversary month is always hard. As is the next and the next and the next.…reflections now are layered with harsh realities and existential crises as I exist in weird spaces of in-between where time has passed but I don’t live in that time and space continuum anymore. Where “be where my feet are” and “mindful presence” mean something different. Where I am so changed that I feel like a particle blaster disintegrated me to bits and what was reintegrated is not what was before. I feel this really strange relationship with being. I feel present in a strange middle. An existence that shouldn’t be… along with an existence that was so meant to be (that ‘so’ holds more than meets the eye, btw)… But to what end? I live in this middle that could have had an end, but hasn’t, but still will, at some point, in an undetermined number of days. It’s weird.
Some days I hate it here.
Some days, I like it.
Most days I’m floating somewhere in the middle.
But every day, I have been forced to live different. And that truth is hard…no matter how I have had to make sense of it to accept it.
Today, 7 years ago, I had an appointment where a doctor’s simple “Oh, I don’t think it’s anything” turned into a different doctor’s “I have a bad feeling it’s something.” Today, 7 years ago, I’d just survived a major car accident 3 days prior. Today, 7 years ago, I sat in my bed wondering why I’d survived a tanker going 65 ripping my car up just to die from ‘c’ (a word that I wasn’t ready to give it its real name, yet, though I knew. Deep down I knew). Today, 7 years ago, I barely slept wondering what was ahead, not yet knowing that 7 days later a phone call would send everything (literally everything) crashing. Painfully demolishing what I knew as my life. Burying me in the rubble of it all. Today, 7 years ago, was a dark day with so many other dark days to come that I didn’t even know could reach the depth of darker darkness that they did. Today, 7 years later, some light has emerged. Different than I’d expected it though. And I’m definitely not awash in it, either…. Cancer forever changed me. Every day since. Every day, still.
Some days it’s still only darkness.
Some days, there is light.
Most days I’m floating somewhere in the middle.
But every day, I have been forced to live different. And that truth is hard…no matter how I have had to make sense of it to accept it.
Thanks for reading 💛
Love you. Life is so hard, for you even harder. I am sorry this is your story, I would have gladly taken it from you. It breaks my heart it will always be a struggle, a challenge, a “not what I (you) wanted or deserved. I am thankful you are here to live life with us, to be the amazing Amber you have always been and will always be. I wish it wasn’t so hard. Love you!