My Lumps

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I found a lump in my left breast a few weeks ago.  I don't do self exams regularly, but there was a sore spot, and I got to poking around, and sure enough, there it was.

I didn't get myself into the doctor until Friday morning, and I probably wouldn't have gone then, except I woke up with a wicked case of vertigo--which I've also never had before--and all of us had to get on a plane to go to a wedding in a few hours and I wanted to make sure I wasn't having a stroke.

[Sidebar:  I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, obvi, and the feeling that I might be having a stroke happens to me semi-frequently:  if I don't get enough sleep, or feel sad or freaked out, or just don't eat every two hours, my eye starts to twitch and I get a kind of migraine-y headache and can't form words and basically my little rat-brain goes and hits the "having a stroke" panic button].

Observation one:  It's funny how I just finished a book for academics on harmonizing work life and home life, and yet that morning woke with vertigo, with dizziness and physical imbalance so bad that I fell twice in the bathroom just trying to get ready to go to the doctor's.

Observation two:  My body is an unrelenting and highly accurate response system to what is going on in my brain and to the choices I make with it.  For example, the vertigo is mostly gone, but then yesterday I developed a stye in my eye, swelling it, and making it a little hard to work.  For fuck's sake already.

I'm not saying I caused myself to have a wacky medical condition that literally mimics what is going on in my life, which perhaps has been too work-centered lately.  But maybe.

Just in case, I'm taking today off.

Anyway, I got to the doctor's on Friday and explained about the dizziness and the falling and the nausea and the splitting headaches and she made sure my left arm felt okay and my speech was okay and said I wasn't having a stroke.  This seemed amazing to me because I felt like I was making no sense at all, like I was moving and talking like one of those animatrons at Chuck-E-Cheese.  And I thought for sure I was stroking out and it was obvious to everyone.  But I also had a little bit of hypochondriac's remorse that it wasn't a stroke, which would earn me at least several weeks in bed and maybe give me some fodder for a Ted Talk.

That was a terrible joke.  I'm sorry I made it.  Forgive me.  I take strokes super seriously.  As you know.

Anyway, vertigo seemed like a merciful diagnosis after that.  Even though Rat Brain went and immediately assumed I'd have it for weeks on end and wouldn't be able to ride my bike or work on my computer or do yoga or drive and then what.

Rat Brain is the worst.  I recommend not going to it for advice.  Ever.

So then I also mentioned the thing about the lump and she said, it's probably nothing, most of these things are nothing, but then she found it pretty much immediately, plus another one, FML, and then started calling it a "mass" and ordered mammograms and things.  She also looked off into the distance and gave an angry little lecture that women are being told not to do self breast exams, and then they don't know how to identify normal lumps vs. abnormal lumps, and I felt like she was telling a story about me right in front of me but acting like I wasn't there.

Once she stopped scolding who knows who she looked at me again and reassured me there were lots of reasons for lumps to appear, meaning other than cancer, I think, though she didn't say that word.  I'm not so sure it's nothing, though rationally I know there's all sorts of things it could be.  I also know there's no need to borrow trouble, as my friend S. says, and there have been lots of examples in my life where I've borrowed trouble needlessly and then everything has been fine.

But it does make you think things.  It does make me think about how I support my family, and what if I get sick and am out for a while.  It makes me think how much I hate being sick, and about how high the dust bunny piles would get in my house if I got sick.  It makes me think about my kids having to see me be sick.  It makes me think about E., who already lost one wife to cancer and who doesn't need to be going through anything resembling that again.  It makes me think about my cousin, who is in the hospital right this very second having very intensive chemotherapy treatments for leukemia that doesn't look at first glance to be super curable, though nobody is counting that lady out yet because she is a badass and miracles happen.  It makes me think about every book I've ever read by women who have been diagnosed with cancer, and then it makes me think about what it will be like to write a post next week some time that says, jk, it wasn't cancer, just some lumpy booby stuff, no problem, no worries, sorry to have sounded the alarm.

I don't give myself too much time to think these thoughts, but they are floating around, back behind my eyeballs, creating static, maybe making the room spin, maybe causing my eye to swell up with fearful tears I can't seem to shed.  Or maybe it's just the beginning of the semester and there's a bunch of germs all over the place and I didn't wash my hands well enough that one time.

Who the hell knows.

Big Love

Fat is not a bad word, it's an adjective, like thin, tall, short.  I won't make it profane.

I didn't used to know this.  I used to think my worth depended on what the world thought of how I looked.  I used to hate my body, the way I looked, just like many of you probably do.

As a child at night as I prayed for my family, I also prayed I would wake up with blonde hair and blue eyes, instead of the doe like browns I saw in the mirror.  My roll model was Wonder Woman, not because she was strong, but because my dad said she was beautiful.

As a tween, I thought my thighs were too big, and my breasts were too small.

As a teenager, I spent one entire year consuming only Diet Pepsi for lunch because I was sure the worst thing in the world to be was fat.

My adulthood up until about four years ago, was consumed with hate for how I could grab a handful of fat around my stomach, hate for the cellulite and stretch marks I'd collected.

I was wracked with guilt over eating a slice of pizza and drinking a beer.  Forget enjoying them, I could only think about how worthless I was because I didn't "resist".

I've ordered a salad I didn't want because I was sure my dining partners were judging me, and that as Kristin Chirico  put it, I needed to shout, "Hey everyone, don't worry, this situation is being chaperoned by vegetables!"

I've missed out on summers by the pool because I thought I was somehow undeserving of wearing a swimsuit.  I was sure that to expose my flapping arms, and jiggly thighs would somehow be inflicting torture on the other swimmers.

I've shot down touching and heartfelt compliments from my husband, believing there was no way they could be true.  Believing it was a fluke that this man loved and appreciated me.

Then, I met an amazing woman.  A fat woman.  A woman who was unafraid to eat carbs in public.  A woman who told me that I had no obligation to fit any arbitrary beauty standard.  A woman who told me to move my body because it felt good, not to change it.  A woman who told me I could wear, eat, live whatever and however I wanted, unapologetically.  A woman who fed my starving mind with information, who told me about a revolution taking place.  A body positive revolution.

Recently, I got to experience an amazing moment in this body positive revolution. While my daughter and I watched from the sidelines, the woman who helped me free myself from self hate, Amy, stripped down to a bikini in a public market, blindfolded herself and asked people to take a stand for self love by drawing a heart on her beautiful, big body.  Maybe you've seen it, but in case you missed it, here's the lovely video she and Melanie made about it.

Photo by Melanie Folwell

There has been an extraordinary outpouring of support for the video.  It has been written about on many blogs.  Amy's been interviewed multiple times.  So, why am I writing about it?  I'm writing about it because there's a revolution afoot my friends, the revolution is gaining ground, and I want this little soapbox I have to be part of it.

I feel so privileged to have been there that day, to have shakily held Melanie's iPhone as it recorded the event.  The tears still sting in my eyes when I think about the women, men and children who ran to her to get their chance to show how valuable all bodies are.  I feel so privileged that my daughter, while guarding Amy's flip flops and our bags, got to witness the love that is in so many hearts, got to see that other people support the idea that she as a young, growing woman can be proud of her body, whatever it looks like.  I feel so privileged to live in a city that embraced, Amy, this project, and the Body Positive revolution. I feel so lucky to know someone brave enough to make this stand.  And, I feel so honored to have had the opportunity to draw a heart, and fill it with "Big Love", over the big, courageous heart of my friend.

Because of this revolution I love myself.

I love myself as I am today.

I love myself without any changes.

I know I'm beautiful, I know I'm amazing, I know I'm more than what the world thinks of my body.

If you don't already know these things about yourself, I'm telling you, they're true.

How to Stay Married.

If you're looking for some sage advice on how to stay married, I have it for you.

JUST DO!

That's right.  That's my advice.  The sum and total of my eighteen years of experience on the subject.

How to stay married?  Just do.

I could go into a long diatribe about how I came to this epiphany.  I could tell you about the trials and troubles Josh and I have faced in the last two months, but I won't.

If you want to stay married, just do.  If you don't, just don't.

If a life long marriage is your aim, accept your spouse as they are, now.  Love them unconditionally.  Love yourself unconditionally.  Take the idea of divorce as a problem solver out of the equation.  Don't bring it up with them, don't even let you mind think it. 

This will be hard, at times, maybe even miserable, but you might also learn a ton about how to forgive, how to accept, how to be generous, how to be kind and how to love.

This Way, or That

E. surprised me for our 13th anniversary with a trip to Portland.  Thinking we were, I don't know, twenty-three or something, we drove seven hours on Friday, stayed in a posh hotel over night, walked around Portland for a few hours the next morning, and drove back.  It was exhausting.  Lovely.  Exhausting.

On the way home we were hauling ass up a steep, winding, four-lane highway pass; around one curve was a red sedan, flipped upside down, wheels still spinning, bodies stiffly circling a car, something suspended upside-down from the roof.  "Is someone still in there?" I asked Eric. "Should we stop?"

He said no, there were other people already pulled over to help, but I wasn't really asking a question anyway, and we pulled over.  There were four women who had been in the car--a fifteen-year-old and her mom, two older ladies, aunties.  A couple of other motorists had pulled whoever was still suspended in the car out.  There were magazines strewn about the roof of the car; snacks; the contents of purses.  It looked like the aftermath of a wild party, the floor of a messy dorm room.

Everyone was fine, mostly.  The two aunties, stout, purses hung off their forearms, lips in tight lines and hair unmussed, seemed as if they had just strolled up.  They were totally unfazed and it was hard to believe they had been in the car at all.

The mom, who had been driving, had blood pouring down her face from a puncture wound to her forehead, but she was still standing and seemed otherwise okay.  She was shaking pretty bad, her eyes wide, and she kept saying, "I could have killed my whole family.  I could have killed them all."  She was clearly in shock and I just stood there and rubbed her back, tried to convince her to sit down, worried that maybe she was hurt worse than she seemed.

Someone else had a first aid kit and gloves on already, and kept asking me if I wanted gloves on too.  I wasn't touching the blood or anything so I ignored them and finally got the woman seated on the rocky embankment.  Cars were still flying up the hill, going so fast, then braking suddenly to look at us, and the road was wet from the rain that had just come through.  E. said he couldn't believe how bald the woman's tires were, and that he was worried the whole time we would get hit by someone else who lost control.

One of the aunties said they had been on their way to a family reunion in LaGrange.  The woman who had been driving said her brother had told her it was time to get a new car, but the car would be finally paid off in three months, so she had told her brother she had decided to drive the car into the ground.  Then she paused.  "I could have killed my whole family," she repeated.  She grabbed her daughter and hugged her so tight and said, "I'm so sorry baby.  I'm so sorry."

Ambulances from the nearby Indian reservation were on the way, and everyone seemed fine, and there were plenty of motorists on the side of the road now.  Cars kept whizzing past us, and it became clear that we were more in the way than not.  So I hugged the lady again, told her and her family I was so glad they were alive and okay, and we left.

I remember fifteen years ago when my then-boyfriend Pete and I drove from LA up to Boise so he could meet my family.  On that trip, too, we passed a wreck, this time on a pretty deserted stretch of road in Northern California.  There was a van, formerly full of people, pulled off to the side of the road, but facing the wrong way, its front end bashed in, windows collapsed; there was a big, overturned truck in the field next to it.  Pete was an EMT, so we pulled off immediately to see if we could help the other motorists who had pulled over ahead of us.

There were bodies in the field.  People had located them and then were coming back to us, their faces grim.  A kid, in his late teens or early twenties, too, was seated by the side of the road, by himself.  His brother, also young, was still strapped into the driver's seat, not moving.  Pete was looking the driver over, and again all I could do was rub the kid's back, tell him it would be okay.  He kept asking about his brother.  Pete and I made eye contact and he shook his head.  Somebody told him he was an EMT and needed to call it.  He had just got out of training and hadn't done anything like this before, so he spent a few more minutes going over the driver again, standing still and quiet, feeling for a pulse, breath sounds.  Then he shook his head a final time.

The kid, rocking now, eyes locked on the front of the van, told me he and his brother and the other passengers were on holiday from Australia.  He didn't know what had happened to cause the accident.  He kept asking about his brother, saying he needed to call his parents, and all I could say was, "Everything's going to be alright.  It's alright."  I lied, and hated lying, and didn't know what else to do.  I tried to calculate the time difference between California and Australia, tried to imagine who would be responsible for making that call, what news would be given.

Eventually the cops and the fire truck came and we didn't need to be there anymore.  We got back in the truck and left.

I felt the same way in both situations, as I got back in the car and sped off.  Not lucky, not reminded of how it can all be over in a minute, not wanting to be more careful.  Just shaky and filled with a sense of the strange, the uncanny.  The weirdness of how you can be part of such a significant moment in someone's life, a moment where maybe their life is changed forever, and also be so totally outside of it, so useless, so extraneous.  And then you can get in your car and drive away, untouched, never knowing anything about those people again.