Fifteen minutes of loving myself, my body, my breasts – why is it so much harder than fifteen minutes of painful memories, of stories I’ve told myself so many times they are bleached clean? I don’t think it’s because I have a hard time loving myself, though if I was my own therapist I might consider than hypothesis, refuse to drop it no matter how vigorously I protested.
I think it’s because the guilt I’d been feeling about my breasts was looming large, and I gave it a voice. Just speaking out can sometimes shrink things, excise the tumour. Hang on a minute…been reading a book and have a quote on this..
I remember that I spoke to her about the power of naming. What we cannot name, I said, we cannot talk about. When we give a name to something in our lives, we may empower that something, as when we call an itch love, or when we call our envy righteousness; or we may empower ourselves because now we can think about and talk about what is hurting us, we may come together with others who have felt this same pain, and thus we can begin to try to do something about it. (Marge Piercy, He, She and It, page 66)
After writing that admission of the going-along-with nature of my breast reduction, I felt lighter. I stood in front of the mirror that evening, the black lace cupping my breasts, and as I pulled it off I felt an awe at my breasts. They are so beautiful, and they are mine. They have not been lessened by the surgery, but they have taken a long time to become mine. And they are the same, and different.
I wanted to come here to acknowledge all the things, great and small, that the surgery has offered me. Pretty bras, affordable bras, off-the-shelf bras. Breasts that are full and soft, but the exact right size for my body. Breasts that do not hang to my stomach, breasts that mainly stay in place when the pretty bras come off, except for the soft weight of time and maturation which offers them the shape of a woman.
My breasts are amazing, awesome. I look at myself with and without clothes, and they are one area I have no cause to find complaint with. I suppose that’s why I’ve felt bad, wondering what it meant to have breasts that were not the breasts I was born with. Though they were not shaped, were not changed in any fundamental way, though mass and weight was removed – what does that mean to my self? My body?
I had a connection with my grandmother through my breasts. I remember being a little girl and walking into her bathroom. She sat in a few inches of water, in that bathtub with the magical sliding glass doors that allowed me to create a whole space apart when I was a little older. My grandmother’s pubic hair was sparse, her body already that of an older woman. Her breasts coated her stomach, hid her stomach, were just the entire front of her body. She lifted a breast and rested it on her shoulder in order to wash her stomach. That image has stayed with me, though I must have only been about four or five when I witnessed this.
I will probably never have that experience, being in an aging body that has been mine for 89 years, taking for granted that my stomach is there, though I cannot see it. I wonder what pregnancy will do to my breasts, and I fear they may become smaller. I also fear them becoming larger. I wonder what stretch marks and pulled vaginal muscles and chapped nipples will be like. I want to hold a baby to my breasts, to allow her or him to get all the sustenance they need from my body – a miracle that my family never had. Bottles are all I ever considered, and now I am in this country with baby slings and breasts, handmade diapers and organic homemade foods.
My body will be changing again, and perhaps the key words are: my body. This is my body, this is the consequence, this is the sum of the years I have spent on this planet. I have made some choices, I have neglected to make others. I have gained weight, and lost weight. I have decided to have my breasts radically resized, simply by the omission of really thinking about what I was doing and making a conscious choice. My unconscious guided me to this place where I am right now, the afternoon sunlight shining across my hands. Shadows slide across the keyboard, dancing as my fingers shift and dance.
My breasts were what they were, then I had surgery. They grew back – not all the way, but most. I lost a lot of weight, and I lost a lot of breast mass again. This time it was an accident, to change my breasts as the result of changing my body. Once more my bra size changed, my body shifted, and once more it felt out of my control.
That’s been sixteen minutes. I’m surprised. This entry was to say that I could not fill six minutes this evening, let alone fifteen. Peace.
Tags: actualize, baby, books, breast reduction, breasts, creativity, culture clash, death, endings, feminist, flair, grandma, grown up, healing, health, inspiration, love, memory, quotes, story, surgery, therapy, writing
