"And all those batteries we stole from smoke-alarms"

I realized today that when my therapist says "grieve" I hear "get over". 

 

Have I grieved my breasts?  Probably not.  I've been sad about them, I've hated them, I'm stalling on calling the plastic surgeon to talk about the mysterious sideboob pain.  I've stopped wearing underwire bras, I've gotten an entirely new wardrobe, I've tattooed them, an absurd number of people on Fetlife have seen a picture of them.  

 

Sometimes I can calm down a little bit and try to practice more patience with younger omnia and say she did what she could when she could and now we live with the decisions.   Sometimes I can say truly awful things to myself about seeing other people's struggles with cancer and how I just got to opt out by cutting off or out most of the bits that were likely to give me cancer which means I had it easy so I should just shut the fuck up with my sadness. 

 

Mostly, I think all the things wrong with my body  are either my fault in the first place or my fault for not being able to deal with it with less flailing.  (I want flailure to be a word so badly).   The loss of sensation and lip droop on my left side from my wisdom teeth surgery?   I should have known better, gotten them out when I was still on my parents' plan or saved up money faster to get them out or shopped around for a surgeon.  Or something else.     The scar on my left hand and the difficulty I have bending my ring and pinkie finger independently?  I should have paid more attention to the stairs or remembered how to fall better.  The hiatal hernia and bad teeth? I shouldn't have been a bulimic alcoholic with a two pack a day habit. 

 

So many things I need or want to get done today.  More embroidery, more cleaning, more cooking, more reading.    But I put the chili on, did some dishes, read about half of The Come Up and now I'm working on the most unspeakably boring part of a big cross stitch project, gridding out the cloth.  But it's pretty much essential for a large scale project on black aida and I'm very good at counting to ten over and over again so it's a party. 

 

I ordered a ugly design toscano garden sculpture for the combo of Mother's Day and her birthday that rolls around every May. I think my brothers are pretty much allowed to completely dodge it now that they've got their own spawn and I've been shirking my mom duty lately and I still owe my dad the oatmeal cookies I was supposed to make for his birthday in March.

 

I still don't really understand my own relationship with my parents, other than my increasing desire not to have it, and not to have to deal with my family about it.  And there's still some aspects of charlie brown and yanking the football away at the last minute to our relationship, but they feel mostly harmless now, like they did all the damage they could and now I'm just left with old people I feel mildly responsible for.  

 

I'm also coveting a tshirt that says "not today, patriarchy" and one that says "Literally any day, Satan".  I have, however, a surfeit of tshirts and am going to hold out buying more as long as possible.

 

I logged into facebook (which I think I'll now just call Inadequacybook) to read the few people I still want to know about that I don't see as much as I'd like.  (Chile and Hips)  TIL: The Mountain Goats' Love Love Love still is on the short list of songs that just straight up makes me cry and I'm not entirely certain why, and Chile's declaration about their decision not to go to their twentieth college reunion made me cry some more, and I don't have any of the sentiments like "I'm glad of all the friends I made" and I don't have a career that's an alternative to either academia or parenthood and the cliff I just drove my mood off sucks all the way down.  Neflix, you're my only hope.  (It's probably time to figure out some ways to keep myself off of Inadequacybook, and try to contact the people I miss about the news I miss without these little side trips into despair.)

ETA: (which for the longest time I always read estimated time of arrival and never as edited to add)  I had Abundance just block facebook on my computer when he got home from running the Fells with Nonsense,