As I sit in the waiting room of the radiology clinic, I
gently squish it back and forth between my right middle and index finger
underneath my crossed arms. I found it about a week ago - the lump in my left
breast. My doctor suggested I get my first mammogram. Over the past week, I
have developed a habit of quickly taking a hand to the lump to check if it is still
there, much like pushing a pair of glasses back up on the bridge of a nose or reaching
for a back pocket to feel for a wallet. A quick check. Still there? Yup. If it
is a cyst associated with my menstrual cycle, it’s supposed to dissipate on its
own within a week or two. It hasn’t yet.
Left beast - UOQ – upper outer quadrant. But I don’t worry until they tell me I
have reason to worry and it’s never too early to join the community of elders
that get to slam their breasts in a refrigerator door on a regular basis. It
almost feels like an
initiation. I am welcomed into an ascended group of women.
Yay me. I wished Jason Mraz would write a happy, awareness-raising song about
getting mammograms.
The slow sea-sawing motion of the lump between my fingers calms
me down as I follow my breasts in thought. Truth is, if I had been either of my
breasts, I would have probably taken steps to secede from the commonwealth of
ME a long time ago too. My breasts haven’t exactly had it easy. My breasts have
been as shamed and shunned and harmed as the rest of me. Maybe more so.
It started when I developed them in my early teens. They
were not particularly anything - big, small, weird - but I hated them. I was
already a bigger kid and now I was growing lumps of fat out of my chest. That
was exactly what I needed - more of my fatness. I was going to be a dancer and
my body was becoming more and more ill-fitting to the dancing ideal. I hated my
nipples too. I fucked with them so much, squishing them, pulling them,
compressing them, that I lost most of my nipple sensation before I was 15. Never to return.
I squished my breasts underneath two kiddie bustiers, rolled
my shoulders up and rounded them forward to shelter my shame in my concave
chest and then buried it all underneath over-sized sweaters. Kids still found plenty of things about me to
hate and pick on, regardless of how deeply I tried to hide my shame.
At 15 I became an anorexic and my boobs retracted to A-cups
within months. That’s when I got all my stretch marks on my breasts. The circumference
of my rib cage went down a whole bunch of inches, my innie became and outie and
I had an indented ridge that started between my breasts and went all the way
down to my belly button. They didn’t bounce. They didn’t present problems. I
barely needed bras at all. On breaks in school I hugged heaters in the hall
ways while talking to a friend. Germany was cold and my starved body couldn’t
keep itself warm.
Then we moved to America. When I arrived I was wearing a t-shirt
and shorts I had bought in the little kids section of the department store. I
could fit into anything. Firefighters would finally be able to carry me out of
a burning building and I wouldn’t require a crane like in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. I was as faint, weak, mute, and
invisible as I was supposed to be.
Then everything fell apart. My system of control failed me. My
body screamed for food like my soul screamed for love and I lost control. I ate
entire pots of rice in a sitting, my mother leaving them on the stove and
walking away, knowing what I was doing. She was desperate and clueless about how to help her starving daughter, Then, me, hating myself, I fasted for three
days. Then I ate another entire pot of rice. Then I threw up or abused
laxatives or starved myself or cut myself or hit my head against a wall until I
could feel it. Then I ate 15 muffins. Then I chain smoked. CHAIN smoked. At 16,
to interrupt my eating. I would smoke for over a decade. Addictions love
company. Then I starved myself for another three days. Though the means of
self-harm, the substances, drugs, food and people involved were on constant rotation,
the pattern went on for years. Within six months I looked ‘healthy’, within a
year I was 50 pounds overweight. BMI has never cut me any slack.
But post-puberty, my fat had reshuffled. I became a
different fat person, now carrying my weight where a woman carries her weight,
in my breasts, thighs and butt. My A cups became double Ds and double Ds on a
16 year old are not easy, especially with an absent father in a new country. I
hated them. My car broke down at ten at night on my way home and I took a ride
with a stranger. I was scared.
I went back to squishing, mushing and restraining, harnessing, compressing and covering. I was trying every kind of flash, crash, and trend diet, living on caffeine-free diet coke and cigarettes until I fell apart and ate a box of raisin bran cereal at one in the morning. Food. The heroin I couldn’t walk away from. The drug I had to learn to control.
Bras killed me. I was barely 18 and shopping in the old lady
section of the department store. I spent a
At 18 I made my first inquiry into breast reduction surgery.
By now, the skin of my breasts was tired
from the stretching and contracting,
the squishing and the mushing. Not only were they too large, but they were also
too low. ‘Well, the nipples shouldn’t be studying the floor’ the boys said at
the party as we are coolly hanging out on the patio smoking talking about boobs.
I went home to look at my breasts in the mirror. Did my nipples study the
floor? Maybe… The smoking and diet coke didn’t help the elasticity of my skin.
E-News, water pills, Dulcolax, Diet coke, juice fasts, Lucky
Strikes, and Splenda. Tons and tons of Splenda. Binges. There were always food
binges. I learned that prior to big award shows, Hollywood stars go get a
massage so vigorous that it actually squishes fat cells to create supple skin,
reduce cellulite and even causes weight loss of a pound or two. The fat cells
in my breasts were larger than peas and they were tricky little fuckers. It
took a while for me to finally really get hold of one and then press down on it
as hard as I could in my pursuit of ‘suppleness and firmness’. The next day my
breasts were covered in bruises. My weight went up and down several times in my
twenties as I sea sawed between ‘you’re too thin’ or much worse, no one commenting
on how I looked because we don’t talk about weight gain.
Then I became a woman. It took a while. Tough things had
continuously improved till then, I was probably about 25 or 26 before I realized
that there was no pain left that I hadn’t inflicted on myself in my cry for
love and that it was time for me to stop. Yoga did play a role in this transition
for me. I didn’t exactly bury all my self-harming ways in a day as I skipped
into the sunset forever cured, but I did find a profound appreciation for
myself, for my body, and for having endured me, life, and all this pain. I
wanted to at least try to be my body’s ally.
New addictions, though the more
socially acceptable kind, still consistently accompanied this path, obsessive over-exercising
(push-ups shrink breasts), binges, gum chewing, the raw food diet, the Atkins
diet, Ayurveda, food combining, cleansing, juicing, and coffee. I knew
everything about food - beta carotene with fat, calcium with magnesium, kidney
cleansing, liver cleansing, colon cleansing,
bladder cleansing, psyllium husk,
flax seed and, in emergencies, smooth move tea. I still doubled up on sportsbras when I taught yoga for fear of becoming the big bosomed bendy joke. Nicotine
gum addiction replaced cigarettes for two years before finally quitting for
good this time. Quitting nicotine will cause a body to plummet into about a
year of hypothyroid as the thyroid learns to live without the constant full
throttle of the drug. Depression, low energy, and anxiety are also common. I
had tools, I was informed, but I still had a hard time. But all in all I
stopped. I stopped squishing myself into things that hurt for too long before
calling myself on it.
I have never overtly asserted my breasts. I have never
leaned onto a counter like Erin Brockovich letting my breasts ride up to my
chin as I ask for what I want. I have been mostly modest though I am not blind
to their power. When they bounce in a good bra, doors open for me and cars wait
patiently for me to cross a street. We are programmed to support beautiful
things. It’s how we support our collective evolution. But this power is quickly
turned on its head. It will work for you as long as you are in motion throughout
the world, but it will work against you on a team or in a business meeting,
because what is in your breasts cannot be in your brain. As a woman, if you
over-rely on your supple bosom, you will soon hear the whispers, jokes and
smarmy remarks. They take you down as quickly as they build you up.
Beauty has been a vixen in my life. She has come and gone as
she pleases, often leaving me stripped for years. For the time being, she has
decided to stay, but I have become distrusting of her and unimpressed with
compliments on my beauty, because if you can’t love me when I’m ugly, you can’t
love me at all.
But in all this, I am not sure that I have ever truly
thanked them. I am not sure that I have really loved my breasts. I am not sure
that I have really welcomed them as integral parts to the collective orchestra
that is my wonderful body. Though I have been kinder to them, they have
remained more of a thing to manage as they are transferred from day-bra to
sports-bra to swim-suit, in an unending pursuit of appropriateness; as they swell
up during certain times of my cycle, as I find myself embarrassed in too low cut
of a shirt in front of 45 people in a mirrored yoga room.
So, as I squish between my fingers this lump, I think to
myself, I don’t blame them. I don’t blame
them that they are a little
disenchanted with me. I don’t blame them that they would like to go to sleep
now because they have had enough of me and my shit. And I don’t blame them if
my teenage rage-fueled, decade-long hate for them has somehow invoked a
response growing within them now. I love them now. I love them for being able
to cup them, and hold them and care for them. I am proud of them for surviving
with me until this point and I want them to know that they are indeed a part of
me and that I have no intentions of extraditing them anymore. I want them to
know that I won’t turn against them, resent them or disown them ever again,
regardless of what we learn in this mammogram. It is my lack of acceptance of
them that I needed to heal all along. I have.
I think my breasts are wonderful. And I don’t care if I wore
the wrong sports bra and now some people are staring at me as I jog, my breasts
bouncing up and down out of control. I don’t care if I wore the wrong sports
bra revealing ‘too much’ cleavage in a downward dog. I will not die in shame. I
will not turn against them anymore. Regardless of anything and for no one. My
breasts are mine. They are tough, and strong, and soft and beautiful and me. And
me, you know….whew… I love.
