Tomorrow I’m having ’surgery’ to have the cyst/lump removed. I’m hoping my mocking use of the quotation marks are justified. I’m a bit nervous.

I mainly keep thinking about the incredibly long journey home. I wonder what it feels like to sit on a train with wadding over your numb cooch. I suppose I will find out and let you know, if you’re interested.

Another amazing thing? I started handwriting a little girl today. I won’t call it a book or even a story, but it is a glimpse into a ten year old I’m really starting to like.

Just had the most wonderful session with a child, and have left work feeling like I want to train in play therapy. I also got a hug. Amazing.

When a woman ovulates, her temperature rises. This means that for half the month, you’ve got some slight ups-and-downs, then a big shift up - with the rest of the month being ups-and-downs on that higher level.

If you can picture what that might look like on a graph, you have just successfully pictured what the stats graph for this blog looks like (the number of people visiting it).

Is it normal to be seeing baby related things EVERYWHERE?

I feel the way the word ‘languid’ sounds today. Liquid, melting, relaxed.

I think one thing I learned from Weight Watchers is that I do not have the skill or persistance that would be needed to be anorexic. I don’t mean to be flippant; merely that keeping meticulous track of what you are eating and what’s in it must be an immense, exhauting process. Luckily Weight Watchers has their nifty little points thing, which means a lot less work for me. Still.

I am wearing my jeans today (never a good idea when it is hotter than the sun outside), and they are verging on being a bit tight - or at least the size they are probably meant to be. I’ve gotten used to having clothes that are too, too big. It’s not a pleasant sensation to think about things not fitting properly. I think having the weekly support the group programme offered actually had a huge impact on me; counselling did as well, though I don’t think I need it anymore in the way I did at one point.

I don’t want to try to drop weight so close to baby making time, as weight loss impacts on the menstrual cycle and that’s not a good thing when you’re keeping track of patterns for very expensive doctors. But I certainly would like to avoid gaining more weight. Perhaps back to Pilates I go - another sterling example of something I enjoy and that benefits me, yet I fail to continue with it.

I visited another service this morning and they had a variation of an old idea/quote hanging in their toilet. ‘If you want something different, you need to do something different.’

I’ve always liked that quote, but for some reason it is really resonating with me today. Okay….speak to you later. And by ‘you’ I’m not sure if I mean people reading this, myself, or the diary.

I’ve written a new song. You really need to hear it to understand the special timing and tone of voice; I have actually recorded it, so who knows.

I went poop,
I went poop-a-doop.
I went poop,
but not enough.

It’s 10:55 and a bit. I can only assume it’s going to hit 56 minutes any second, because every time I’ve looked at the clock it’s been 55 past. Decided to have a nice little five minute type-whatever-comes-into-my-head-athon, perhaps as a way to give myself permission to go to sleep. I’ve found it hard to walk away from creating the past few nights. This is obviously a good thing, but I don’t want to end up in weirdo vampire staying up all night territory.

I have been thinking that having a focus, like my breast reduction, gives me the opportunity to lose myself for short spurts of time. I guess it’s not really losing myself; it’s more like an intense focusing inwards and just watching the words as they appear on the screen. I would like a random batch of words or ideas to focus on. Words, probably. I used to go to a site called One Word. Every day was a different word, and you have thirty seconds to write about it. That’s what I need here. A constant source of words.

I don’t want to have to pick them at the minute. No matter how ‘random’ I think my topic selection would be, the mere fact that I had picked it would indicate something else was going on. This isn’t a bad thing, but I would like to be surprised by what I saw on the screen. The psychodynamic elements of my counselling training sort of spoil it for me - because I think that whatever the word, how unexpected the sentences, they would be messages of things that were just boiling away in my brain. The things I write are just the bubbles coming to the surface and popping. The heat is still on, deep inside.

One minute left. Feel free to leave a word or two, if you like.

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.

Fuck. TMD and Aussie have just told me that Dumbledore and Gandalf are not played by the same person. I don’t really believe them; I swear there was some sort of connection. When I asked them (ah, speakerphone) if there was, Aussie said, ‘What, other than the fact they’re both wizards?’

So: I met Gandalf.

I would have rather met Dumbledore - the original one. No offense to the guy who PLAYS Gandalf, because he was lovely. I just prefer smart wizards who will teach me magic to old men wizards who are off rambling the world fighting wars. Though his fireworks would be cool.

Ah: further correction. Aussie did not puke off a pier in Denmark, Crazy Bitch did. Sorry, Aussie.