It was a routine mammogram in 2007 that showed “something”. That something turned out to be several small malignant tumours spread around one breast. Off it went, and the other one too, for good measure. And then the reconstruction started. I was in my 40s, and the unspoken assumption was that I would NEED two breast shapes on my chest in order to feel like a whole woman.
What followed was 13 years of repeated unsuccessful attempts to give me what the society expected of me: a regular female shape. I hated the implants. They shifted, they cut off sensation in parts of my breasts, and they felt like two hard tennis balls attached to my chest… And they certainly didn’t make me feel any better about my mutilated body. Only now it was both mutilated and distorted by those two weird lumps. Whenever anyone wanted to hug me, I’d hunch my shoulders forward, just to be sure that the person’s chest did not come into contact with mine…
And then, three years ago, I discovered that the implants I had, could cause a different type of cancer that would kill if left untreated. And the only treatment was to remove the implants. Off they went too, just like my own breasts 13 years earlier. Only this time I said, no more – no implants, no more reconstruction. I am done, I am going flat, and I am going to love my own body just like it is. Well, that was easier said than done. To have those strange shapes and asymmetrical raised scars where breasts should have been, was a lot harder to accept than I had anticipated. I could cope with the stretch marks left from pregnancies, with the middle-age belly spread, the wrinkles… But the ugly collection of mangled, raised scars on my chest? That was just too much…
It was the loving gaze of my partner that finally helped me find acceptance, but with it came anger at myself that I had spent 13 years trying to accommodate expectations of female bodies; trying to fit in; trying to be the girl I wasn’t… I am at peace with my body now, and am finally able to appreciate that it’s not the individual body parts or their absence that create beauty. It’s how we feel, how we are, and how we see ourselves in the gaze of those who love us.
