There's no two ways about it, tomorrow is going to suck. I don't think you can ever give a truly honest assessment of yourself, you see things in photographs that you never notice in a mirror, and vice versa.
I'm 41 years old. I'm told I "don't look my age", whatever the hell that actually means. This is what 41 looks like on me, and I still happily accept the compliment when somebody assumes late 20s. It happens a lot at work, mostly because of my resume, I think - they hear that I started as a grad student intern in 2005, but don't realize I was 34 at the time. That makes the math come out wrong.
I've been told I'm somewhere between pretty and beautiful. I've been told I'm disgusting and not worth the price of my medical care because I'm so irretrievably, irresponsibly fat. I've absorbed all of it, tried let the bad shit go and hold on to the good stuff. To live a reasonably healthy active life and use the body I have to the best of my abilities. It took 36 years for me to figure out that fighting what my body wants to be isn't worth my sanity or my health. I've been comfortable with that for a while now, and weirdly I think that makes me more comfortable with the mastectomies and reconstructions to come. Ovaries? Mine haven't been working properly for decades. It's been at least 25 years since my body has resembled anything remotely like what my culture thinks it ought to look like. Surgery will be painful, and I know I'll lose something emotionally there too, but there's no perfection to be lost here. There are lots of scars on my body, a few more won't make that big a difference to me now.
Through all the crap I've dealt with around my size, I've always felt pretty confident about three things - my skin, my teeth, and my hair. Good genes. Good conditioner. Good sunscreen. I really should floss more.
Tomorrow one of those things is going away, and it's not coming back for a long long time. I know it's the right choice for me to be proactive and get it done. That's who I am, it's how I do things. Control what I can, let the rest go. I've got great hair, and I've got enough of it that a skilled person can probably make at least two wigs out of it for kids who will make better use of it than I will be able to. I am happy with this choice.
But this is hard. Harder than anything else so far. Tomorrow night the mirror is going to tell me an entirely different story, and I'm not sure I'm ready to see it.
I'm 41 years old. I'm told I "don't look my age", whatever the hell that actually means. This is what 41 looks like on me, and I still happily accept the compliment when somebody assumes late 20s. It happens a lot at work, mostly because of my resume, I think - they hear that I started as a grad student intern in 2005, but don't realize I was 34 at the time. That makes the math come out wrong.
I've been told I'm somewhere between pretty and beautiful. I've been told I'm disgusting and not worth the price of my medical care because I'm so irretrievably, irresponsibly fat. I've absorbed all of it, tried let the bad shit go and hold on to the good stuff. To live a reasonably healthy active life and use the body I have to the best of my abilities. It took 36 years for me to figure out that fighting what my body wants to be isn't worth my sanity or my health. I've been comfortable with that for a while now, and weirdly I think that makes me more comfortable with the mastectomies and reconstructions to come. Ovaries? Mine haven't been working properly for decades. It's been at least 25 years since my body has resembled anything remotely like what my culture thinks it ought to look like. Surgery will be painful, and I know I'll lose something emotionally there too, but there's no perfection to be lost here. There are lots of scars on my body, a few more won't make that big a difference to me now.
Through all the crap I've dealt with around my size, I've always felt pretty confident about three things - my skin, my teeth, and my hair. Good genes. Good conditioner. Good sunscreen. I really should floss more.
Tomorrow one of those things is going away, and it's not coming back for a long long time. I know it's the right choice for me to be proactive and get it done. That's who I am, it's how I do things. Control what I can, let the rest go. I've got great hair, and I've got enough of it that a skilled person can probably make at least two wigs out of it for kids who will make better use of it than I will be able to. I am happy with this choice.
But this is hard. Harder than anything else so far. Tomorrow night the mirror is going to tell me an entirely different story, and I'm not sure I'm ready to see it.
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