When I leave it behind...

Most people would never guess in a million years that there are scars stretching across my chest with no nipples.

I've just been struck by a thought...or rather a string of them. This happens sometimes when 'm beading. As my hands piece things together my head begins to do the same. The parallels are fascinating, really. Sometimes the pattern doesn't work out so I have to undo my work, re-plan, re-arrange, and re-string. I suppose life can be like beading necklaces.

My mom came out of surgery doing quite well. Since she does not have to suffer chemotherapy or radiation, she was able to get breast implants at the same time as the mastectomy. That gave me comfort. It doesn't completely erase the horror but it softens the blow quite a bit.

It was in May of 2012 that I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. For the past two and a half years, breast cancer has been the major defining factor of my life. I've been a new mother fighting breast cancer, I've been a wife fighting breast cancer, I've been a single mom fighting breast cancer. I've been an artist, a writer, a student, a destitute daughter and friend...it's all been tangled up in cancer. Having done this dance twice, I already knew that its mark was permanent.

You don't just “get cancer” and then leave it at the side of the road abandoned or sitting by itself in a restaurant wondering what happened. Once it grips you it is a part of you forever. However, that leaves me to wonder at what point it will stop being one of the first things that is used to describe me, like having my hair dyed purple or learning Krav Maga. When I take off my bra I see breasts with no nipples and scars screaming across them. Cancer's mark is there in the mirror every day. It is inside my voice when I say hello to someone, when I do my dishes, when I pay my cell phone bill. I make jewelry for the cause, I am writing a book. I have been shut away from the “real world” for so long that social situations normal to most have become strange and alien to me.

Looking back at my brother's death, I see how losing George is a permanent part of me but not the defining circumstance hovering over every day like it once was. I will always be a grieving sister I suppose, but I don't start each day with “my brother died” anymore. Will cancer be the same way? When it is no longer one of the first things to talk about what will I have to say? I've been walking this dreamscape for so long, I'm not so sure I will ever be fully returned to “reality.” Maybe that's okay though. But at some point...I'll need to find something else to talk about.