"you've never done this before, do you want to look like a fool?"

So, it appears there's still room for more personal growth.

If I think of the mastectomy as a gigantic, cancer-preventing, kind of barbaric tattoo, it somehow feels easier to come to terms with in my head. I'm still changing my body in all the ways that I can to make it as much mine as it can be, and this is another one. There's a lot of different kinds of fear, and there are a lot of different ways to hate what I look like, but I know, no matter how everything else changes, I've got some kickass tattoos and everyone should want to either lick them or have them.

I guess I still think of my body as having promised me something, and going back on that promise. Or maybe "life" had promised something. And here's where I envy people their gods, because then they can either have something to believe or something to blame, other than themselves.

I am not so delusional as to believe I gave myself a genetic mutation. If I had that kind of power, rest assured I would mutate into something much more awesome than high-risk. I believe, however, that there's a lot here that's my fault. And a lot of it is my weight (of course), but I still kind of believe that if I could just Stiff Upper Lip a little more, I'd have managed to stop being quite so depressed/anxious. And of course, every new thing, I twist until I find some way I could have done something different. All the colonoscopy findings? Totally because of a semester of an eating disorder fifteen years ago. Hand surgery? I'm clumsy because I'm fat so I fell down the stairs. Dental surgery because of shadows in my jawbone? Obviously, past-me didn't do well enough on oral hygiene.

Yeah, it's like a fucking cat's cradle game in here. And not those beginning shapes either, but the kind where you have to find a string with your pinkies and dislocate your wrists for the next shape.

And this is all wrapped up in still more. I've used my breasts to keep people from actually looking at me for years and years (or at least I think I have). I still want to be thought of as attractive, and I don't even know to whom, or if I want to be sexually attractive or socially attractive, or both. Which is part of why I'm so afraid of being a mess, and yet I keep exploding all over livejournal.

And I do want to bring it in, play it closer to the chest, care less about overtures un-returned and more about the people who are here. And I'm working on it, whittling down all my social media, so I'm not seeing the people I'm not talking to.

But I don't feel like I can really change anything, that these next three weeks are just some miserable form of limbo. I literally cannot imagine life on the other side of the mastectomy, and I suspect it's not going to be real until I'm there, living it. So it doesn't matter what projects I plan, or what ways I try to find to unpack this desperate need for approval, because I'm not even certain if I'll be enough this me on August 20th for plans to matter.

anecdotal evidence about how awesome my life is: I used to wake up and think something like "fuck, again?". Now I wake up every morning and thing "Yay! Jason! Doggie! Kitties!" It might still be followed by "fuck, again" but that's more about getting up than it is about existing.

Reason for anecdotal evidence: I used to refuse to believe in a future. This time, I'm just refusing to believe in the next six months. I don't know what happens on the other side of fear, if I just find a new thing to fear, or if I have more energy to devote to making myself happier than I am today.

(things I'd say if this wasn't already too long: is this why people have children? what's the possible difference between now and then? Is it true that I've never hated myself as much as when I realized that the things I think I want aren't things I can self-produce? Is my belief livejournal's dead and just twitching now changing what I say here? Who do I hope is reading? Why?)

"you've never done this before, do you want to look like a fool?"

So, it appears there's still room for more personal growth.

If I think of the mastectomy as a gigantic, cancer-preventing, kind of barbaric tattoo, it somehow feels easier to come to terms with in my head. I'm still changing my body in all the ways that I can to make it as much mine as it can be, and this is another one. There's a lot of different kinds of fear, and there are a lot of different ways to hate what I look like, but I know, no matter how everything else changes, I've got some kickass tattoos and everyone should want to either lick them or have them.

I guess I still think of my body as having promised me something, and going back on that promise. Or maybe "life" had promised something. And here's where I envy people their gods, because then they can either have something to believe or something to blame, other than themselves.

I am not so delusional as to believe I gave myself a genetic mutation. If I had that kind of power, rest assured I would mutate into something much more awesome than high-risk. I believe, however, that there's a lot here that's my fault. And a lot of it is my weight (of course), but I still kind of believe that if I could just Stiff Upper Lip a little more, I'd have managed to stop being quite so depressed/anxious. And of course, every new thing, I twist until I find some way I could have done something different. All the colonoscopy findings? Totally because of a semester of an eating disorder fifteen years ago. Hand surgery? I'm clumsy because I'm fat so I fell down the stairs. Dental surgery because of shadows in my jawbone? Obviously, past-me didn't do well enough on oral hygiene.

Yeah, it's like a fucking cat's cradle game in here. And not those beginning shapes either, but the kind where you have to find a string with your pinkies and dislocate your wrists for the next shape.

And this is all wrapped up in still more. I've used my breasts to keep people from actually looking at me for years and years (or at least I think I have). I still want to be thought of as attractive, and I don't even know to whom, or if I want to be sexually attractive or socially attractive, or both. Which is part of why I'm so afraid of being a mess, and yet I keep exploding all over livejournal.

And I do want to bring it in, play it closer to the chest, care less about overtures un-returned and more about the people who are here. And I'm working on it, whittling down all my social media, so I'm not seeing the people I'm not talking to.

But I don't feel like I can really change anything, that these next three weeks are just some miserable form of limbo. I literally cannot imagine life on the other side of the mastectomy, and I suspect it's not going to be real until I'm there, living it. So it doesn't matter what projects I plan, or what ways I try to find to unpack this desperate need for approval, because I'm not even certain if I'll be enough this me on August 20th for plans to matter.

anecdotal evidence about how awesome my life is: I used to wake up and think something like "fuck, again?". Now I wake up every morning and thing "Yay! Jason! Doggie! Kitties!" It might still be followed by "fuck, again" but that's more about getting up than it is about existing.

Reason for anecdotal evidence: I used to refuse to believe in a future. This time, I'm just refusing to believe in the next six months. I don't know what happens on the other side of fear, if I just find a new thing to fear, or if I have more energy to devote to making myself happier than I am today.

(things I'd say if this wasn't already too long: is this why people have children? what's the possible difference between now and then? Is it true that I've never hated myself as much as when I realized that the things I think I want aren't things I can self-produce? Is my belief livejournal's dead and just twitching now changing what I say here? Who do I hope is reading? Why?)