"just as far in as you'll ever be out"

[omnia_mutantur]

 Picked up my new progressives today, which is awesome and currently super disoriented.  And I suspect they won't correct all the things I've been attributing to not having them, but even a little relief would be awesome and they're definitely going to correct the weird neck aches I get from trying to peer underneath my glasses to do any detail work.

I got my first vaccine shot and I feel like a giant fraud about it.  I got a text from DFCI (the local cancer hospital) saying I was eligible and I can only assume my eligibility hinged on having an oncologist, even if I've never had the cancer having an oncologist implies.  And there's so much internally riding on the whole BRCA diagnosis not being something I should feel anything about, much less grief, because it was so much better than the alternative.   

Recently I emailed my doctor about the ongoing discomfort I'm experiencing in my right boob, hoping that there was some sort of at-home PT they could recommend, since the first time post-mastectomy it took like 8 years to get uncomfortable.   But I got an email back from the nurse that told me that it was almost certainly a side effect of getting the largest implants or wearing the wrong bras and that I should wear a compression bra 24/7 for the rest of ever.  I of course heard this as you're fat and you make bad decisions and you should have known that you either could have a facsimile of your pre-mastectomy body or comfort and asking for both is greedy and bad.  I'm going to push harder, and hopefully make an actual office visit sometime in the slightly less pandemicky times, but for now, I'm wearing ugly bras and somehow that seems especially cruel, since part of the reason I wanted these implants is so I could still feel good in clothes, sometimes.  I fucking hate the seaming on these bras, it's a giant horizontal line around what would be nipple height.  I hate they show barely any tattoo.  I hate that I can't find alternatives that are a little lower cut, or a little less coverage, and while I've tried to find anything else on line in my size, it turns out most compression bras are designed to minimize and do so by having a whole lot of fabric.  
 

It's felt nearly impossible to motivate myself to walk, and even my best internal bully seems to have switched from the "you're lazy and weak if you don't make yourself do something you don't want to" to "nothing's going to make you not lazy and weak and fat, so almost nothing matters, instead go clean or cook something or at least feel like shit about not doing those things rather than not doing self-centered things.  I've been struggling more and more as the days go by with my own aimlessness.  Sure, I mostly keep a household of two men and five small animals running, but as the pandemic continues, I've been tightening into myself more and more, unable to keep up with even volunteer obligations, unable to engage with people even in the medium of text.  Or maybe I'm just unwilling, but I can't currently tell the difference. I have all these shoulds floating around in my head but nothing I do seems to be able to push them from should into actually doing. But over them all is that I should be figuring out who to be or what to do, I should have a job, be in school, have a kid, add something to the world.
 

There are still good things, I've read 50 books already this year, made awesome cookies, discovered awesome local places to get food (prepared and not), finished a cross stitch project, am still doing some sort of good work in a local online community, getting my first shot meant that I felt comfortable finally scheduling a tattoo appointment after having to cancel the one I had last March (which was intended to do some magic and help reconcile me to having had yet another surgery).  This time I'm getting the Dorothea Tanning beastie that's been with me for so long (I was introduced to the painting over two decades ago at the PMA), on my ankle over the Franz Wright quote about the death of a cat, since the beastie is inextricably linked with ideas of Funnyface.  Oh and hopefully ocean waves on the inside of my right ear, so I can remember some things about what moves me.  
 

 

Comments

[sabotabby]

Everyone needs to get the vaccine and if there's a shortage, it's not your problem for getting it too early but the fault of government and pharmaceutical for not providing enough.

I keep seeing so many awesome people being like, "I haven't done enough, and I'm not enough" lately and let me tell you, if you've made it this far, you have done tons.