DAY TWENTY-THREE

My mom said, “It’ll get easier, and you’ll start living again. Because that’s what you do when you have cancer—you live with it until one day you’re free from it.”

She’s right. I’m only 23 days in and it’s already gotten easier, and I’m positive having my mom here has helped more than anything else. The initial shock has worn off, and the following depression has even abated some. But really, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of my fight. The fight that doesn’t officially begin until March 7th.

Last week I found out my definitive surgery date along with my genetic testing results. Then, after hanging up with the genetic counselor, I resumed texting my sister.

Me: “So…all seventeen genetic markers are negative.”

Chrissy: “Really? So there’s no correlation between you, mom, and grandma all getting breast cancer?”

Me: “Either they haven’t discovered it yet, or the women in our family are simply voodoo cursed.”

Chrissy: “A Druid curse, you mean. ‘Cause we be Irish. Of course, you’re Polish, too. And the Poles have an entire chapel made out of skulls, you know?”

Me: “Whatever lore or curse-nationality suits you, sister-dear.”

So, yeah, I have no known gene mutations lurking inside my DNA. AND, of course this information is a thing worth celebrating…but at the same time it leaves me feeling a little low. How much suffering does one family have to endure? At least with a gene mutation there’d be an explanation for a three-tiered-multigenerational-breast-cancer-diagnosis. Without an explanation, I’m left with Druid curses and morbid Polish architecture. In other words, I’m left with nothing but my ugly emotions.

Other than that, I have very little news to impart. My surgery date has been set for March 7th. And the weeks leading up to surgery are filled with appointments—meeting with a plastic surgeon, surgery pre-testing at the hospital for bloodwork and X-rays, meeting with my General Physician for a surgery wellness clearance, etc.

I’m just waiting. And waiting. And fucking waiting some more.

It wreaks havoc on a person’s psyche, you know? I’m hyper aware of this thing inside me—my cancer—and being the wildly imaginative person I am, you can only imagine all the terrible things currently swimming around inside my gray matter. Like piranhas, they’re ravaging my serotonin and dopamine, leaving only cortisol behind.

*sigh* Yes, my medulla is working overtime lately. No, the Ativan I was prescribed isn’t helping much.

The most prevailing fear is that the cancer is spreading. That, while I sit here and drive myself to the brink of madness, this poison inside me is spreading. I continue to envision an inky blackness of sorts unfurling inside my body, coating each organ it touches.

Rational me knows this isn’t happening. But still, I just want it out, and to start the treatment that will kill any remnant of it. And I just want my life back. The one that was hijacked by this nipple-topped ball of fat and tissue that I typically refer to as my right breast. However, in light of recent events, Murderous Bitch seems more apt a name. Though, once the cancer is gone and she’s been reconstructed, I might forgive her. Or not. We shall see. But for the time being she’s in the doghouse.

Speaking of murderous bitches, I was talking to my sister, Jill, the other day—who’s not really a bitch or murderous—detailing for her everything I know so far. When I paused a moment, she released a slow breath and said, “You sound brave, Madeline. You sound so brave.”

I immediately burst into tears. Forget that Jill lives in Tennessee, and I haven’t seen her in years and I miss her terribly. Forget that I’m 9-years older than she is and, to her, I’ve maybe always seemed brave in some way or another simply because I was that much older. Forget all of that, because none of those things matter. There’s just Jill’s speculation and my terrible truths, and the fact that the very last thing I feel is brave.

I’m angry.

Embarrassed even.

And really, really scared.

I used to be brave.

But it was mostly indifference, and like I’ve said before, stupidity, too. But there were bits of brave. Shards of spirit. I can see her clearly in my minds eye—sitting cross-legged on a filthy couch inside a smoke-filled club, bobbing her shaved head up and down to the beat of a punk rock anthem rioting on stage. She was brave in her Dr. Martens. She was brave in her fishnet tights and mini skirt. She was brave with her cigarette pressed between her lips. “Homeless-chic” is what some guy used to call her back then, but that’s a story far more complicated than I have the emotional tolerance to delve into at the moment. It’s a good one, though, spans a few years, has lots of sex, drugs, and early 2000’s bad fashion choices, so maybe I’ll share it someday.

Where was I? Ah, yes, young me was inside a club, fresh-faced and full of righteous rage, wearing my insecurities on my sleeveless band-tee for all to see, daring anyone to point them out to me. I spoke my mind. No, I shouted my mind. I crossed boundaries. I burned bridges. I was unapologetically, utterly fucked up.

But I was still brave.

I don’t know what happened. Years passed. The tide rolled in, and out. And each time it took a piece of me with it.

Now I sit here with far more hair on my head than 18-year-old me would have approved of, wearing far more makeup too. And I’m obsessing over the things that are quickly closing in on me, things like permanent scarring and disfigurement, hair loss and weight gain and…

I know it might seem like superficial worries to those that haven’t gone through something as life-altering and body-changing as cancer can be, but I promise you it isn’t the worries that are superficial. It’s society that’s superficial, and it’s society’s sickness that’s infected us all—the impossible beauty standards and unrealistic body expectations that no one could ever hope to live up to. Impossible for even those women with a full head of hair, a slim figure, and two perfectly shaped breasts. And utterly inconceivable for those of us who have already, or will be soon, undergoing irreversible changes to all of those things.

I need her now—that girl who didn’t care. The one that said fuck you to society’s expectations, and a double fuck you in the face of fear. The girl that was afraid deep down but always pushed through it, middle fingers in the air, and emerged victorious on the other side. Scared, for sure. But A L I V E. And breathless with exhilaration.

“They” say youth is wasted on the young but it isn’t. The youth isn’t clueless—most know they have their whole lives ahead of them. They’re as wild and as free as they should be, as is their right to be. It’s the older we get, and the closer we get to the end of our roads, that make us scared and stupid. Suddenly, our mortality is staring down it’s hook nose at us, its black, beady eyes taunting us with whatever darkness we do or don’t believe in.

And speaking of existential musings… Remember that gas station counter I’d sit upon, my head on Aaron’s shoulder, his arm around my waist, sharing a pack of cigarettes and bottle of blue Gatorade.

“When we’re 30,” I’d always say, “and I’m still scraping the bottom of barrel for boyfriends, you’ll marry me, right? And save me from myself?”

Aaron would grin and nod. “Of course, Maddy.” His voice was like silk, soft and smooth as it cascaded over you, and never quite fitting the large, hulking beast of a boy he was.

He’d take a drag off his cigarette, and continue, “I’m about done with my boyfriends, too.”

But as life would have it, Aaron never made it to 30. He never made it past 23, and I turned 24 without him. 25 and 26, too. The year I turned 30, while everyone else was joking about how “it was all downhill from here”, I was busy ignoring them, grinning from ear to ear. I recall standing in the center of a busy parking lot in the middle of the city and shouting to anyone who would listen: “I turned 30 today!”

‘Cause, you know, that was a goal. To turn 30…for me, and for Aaron.

I’ve got a new goal now.

I see you 40, and I’m coming for you. I’ll crawl if I have to, but I’m going to make it. Battle-scars and all.