Friday was my 28th treatment, and it went off
without a hitch. I briefly met with
Alice, who did an exam and gave me a good news/bad news sort of report: the
good news is that everything looks the way she would expect it to look and
there is healthy skin peeking out from under the burned stuff that is peeling
off; the bad news is that she isn’t expecting my energy to dramatically
increase for much longer than I had thought. I was under the impression that
about 2 week after my last treatment, I would be feeling pretty much back to
normal. Instead, Alice thinks that 2
weeks out is when I will be feeling the worst
of it! All the effects, including the
fatigue, are cumulative, and there’s a delay on top of that. So it’s going to take longer than I had
thought to get back to the rest of my normal life, to try to create a new normal from what’s left of this, and
to stop with the 4-hour daily naps.
Sigh.
But right now I have bigger fish to fry, because I think it’s
time to finally address what is, for me, the obvious pink elephant in the
middle of this particular room: sex.
Because the fact is that I haven’t been having any of
it. At all. For about a month now. And it’s not because Kara hasn’t made her
interest clear. It’s all on me. I have been having a really hard time in my
radiated body, to the point that I swear to god the people at Fred Meyer look
at me knowingly, like they can see my disease right through my clothes, like
they have defect-specific x-ray vision or something. I feel like I look toxic, like my skin must
feel toxic to the touch, like I maybe even smell
toxic. They radiate me behind a door
that would make the vaults at Fort Knox look like child’s play, so I must take
it with me, out into the rest of the world, and it must be recognizable with
every possible sense… right?
I dunno. I mean, the
intellectual part of me doubts my own spin.
But I haven’t been able to shake the feeling, even a bit. The first couple of weeks, I was still in the
“what if” phase, and I was still future tripping about how my skin and general body was going to react. But then the future part came, and I could see
my body reacting, and there no more wondering left to do. I could just look in
the mirror, and there were no more guessing games: my skin turned bright pink,
some of it turned black, it peeled off, the new skin on my areola looks plastic
(I swear, burn victim skin is recognizable a mile away), everything is swollen
and sensitive to the touch (or a light wind), and I have rarely felt less
desirable in my entire life.
I want, so much, to pretend that last part isn’t true. I
want to instead feel like the biggest badass I know for going through what I’m
going through, and I want to think that makes me look hot. But I’m not a badass,
at least not for this. I just got
cancer, and then chose to treat it. Nothing heroic about it -- just a simple and
self-serving choice after my breast was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I can’t rest on the “yeah, one of my boobs
looks like it was transplanted on to my chest from someone’s else body, but it’s
because I’m so fucking TOUGH!” line.
Doesn’t work. Plus, it’s hard to
feel or look badass when all you want
to do is nap.
And I want to pretend that I’m not so sensitive to cultural
perceptions of femininity or beauty or desirability. Because I identify as a feminist before I
identify as anything else, because I’m a high femme, because I’m a dyke… I
dunno. Like my politics or identity
markers are supposed to shield me somehow from giving a shit about the fact
that one of my most visible gender markers is totally jacked up. Like I’m supposed to be above it, somehow.
Well, I’m here to say that I am officially not above it. Not even a little bit.
The fact is that I’m a healthy woman with a healthy sex
drive and I’m lucky to have a wonderful sexual relationship with someone I love
deeply. And I have missed it. I have missed the closeness and the
tenderness, and I missed feeling wanted and feeling, dare I say it, beautiful. Having sex with Kara makes me feel those
things. But I had been denying myself –
and her! – of all it because:
- I was afraid of accidentally hurting my breast;
- I was afraid Kara wouldn’t see me as a sexual being anymore, just a collection of clinical body parts, one of which is currently dysfunctional;
- I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get out of my head enough to really be present in my body, so it would end up awkward or, worse yet, painful;
- I was afraid that it wouldn’t feel the same. Like, I was afraid that somehow, what is happening in my breast would prevent me from feeling everything I normally feel when I have sex.
I know that last one doesn’t make a lot of sense. I mean, despite that whole “the leg bone’s
connected to the knee bone” thing, there isn’t actually any direct connection
between my breast tissue and my vagina.
But these are the physiological things that make me female, and in my
case, that coincide with me being 100% woman.
So to my way of understanding myself, they actually are connected.
And for the
last month, I suppose I was just more comfortable sitting in the fear that I
could no longer have a fulfilling sex life than I would have been trying it and
maybe confirming my fears.
But there’s a reason that so many people who are afraid of
heights end up going bungee jumping. That
whole thing about confronting one’s fears is powerful and true.
I’m so relieved and thrilled to report that I was
wrong. Kara and I had sex today, despite
my fears, and I felt everything I wanted to feel and nothing I didn’t. Nothing hurt, I was able to be present in the
moment, and Kara treated my body exactly the way she always has; it was obvious
that she didn’t see me as any less desirable or attractive than she ever
has. It felt like such an enormous
watershed moment for me, realizing that I still get to find pleasure in my body
despite the fact that it grew cancer cells without my permissions, learning
that the people who truly loved me before I got cancer are going to love me still,
and believing that some people -- the top shelf people who can look beyond
weird-ass burn lines and rubber chicken skin -- might even still think I’m
beautiful.
I only have two sessions left. I got this.
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