The Bridge

Here is the ketchup. I was diagnosed with breast cancer on Monday. Three negative pregnancy tests and today my monthly visitor came. TMI? Such is my life right now. I am squabbling with myself over starting a new blog, the cancer blog, or keeping up with this blog since we are still, technically in our first year of marriage. The marriage and the cancer go hand in hand now. The cancer is part of the marriage. The cancer is in me. The cancer can go fuck itself. To say that I feel disconnected from the world is an understatement. I feel like I can't connect to anything. To live, to cope, is to go through the motions of my life pre cancer. I can do it well. It's called autopilot. I'm passing. Unfortunately there are decisions to be made, and while decisions like whether or not to lop off your boobies in exchange for something else entirely, or just scoop out part of one boob should be made under sound mind and calm spirit, I just don't know that that is a possibility. The decision could still be made for me, although it would be nice to have some control in the matter. Perhaps I jumped the gun when I went about chirping cheerfully that I knew that underneath all of it, without a shadow of a doubt I would come out on the other side of this cancer thing a better and more inspired person. An inspiring person. A fearless person. And by underneath it all I refer to the fear,the anxiety,the sadness,anger, the mourning of my unborn child, the mourning of a pregnancy I will never have,the mourning of my breasts as i know them,the mourning of my hair(that will grow back, i know), the changes that will take place inside of my body once chock full of chemicals and radiation and hormone blocking drugs with horrible side effects. Perhaps I put too much faith in the old adage "fake it till you make it". I am faking it most of the time. What i have become as a result is a vessel completely void of emotion, eerily calm, or synthetically optimistic, or a blubbering,irritable mess. I feel right now as if I'm about to lose myself. If I make the decision to have this surgery I will lose a part of myself. Forever. And I like that part of myself. In fact , I like all of myself. The self that I knew before cancer. This new self, I fear. I don't know her. I don't know this aggression. I don't know this pain. I don't know this fear or this resentment or this loss. I don't know how to bridge the gap between myself and the people around me that don't have cancer. I suppose that the body who is writing this entry is the bridge between pre cancer and post cancer me. I am not familiar with this body.