Being me in the world
It’s so strange in many ways to sit here, walk around, sleep etc etc with the knowledge that there’e something in my body that doesn’t belong.
The last time I had a ‘visitor’ within me for so long was my kids as they were growing. But there were each meant to be there. They were meant to be part of me – and then they became themselves.
Even when I had the two pregnancies that ended in miscarriage, it was different. Those ‘visitors’ were apparently not meant to be and my body got rid of them itself. Now, it’s different, though. Now I have, not a ‘visitor’, but an intruder that just sits there, growing – slowly, thank God, but growing nonetheless. And it’s just in the way. It’s just not meant to be there.
And it’s got to be got rid of.
I went to visit a friend of mine who had a mastectomy last year. I still don’t know what they are going to have to do to get rid of my intruder, but I am preparing myself for everything, I reckon. I’m the sort of person who needs to know the whole picture: what is possibly the worst case scenario and what is the best. Then I can understand where I fit into the continuum between. So I want to find out about mastectomies.
It’s amazing to meet / speak to women who have had what I have – and worse and better – and see them just as normal, straightforward people, with something different about them that no-one really knows about. Usually. It’s really life-affirming in many ways and just adds another arrow to my quiver of reasons for being able to say, with authority: “It’s going to be okay.”
I know, full well, that it’s going to be really hard getting there. But it is going to be okay.
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