Titty Gate

As I navigate through the big C, I have done a lot of digging through my head for the “whys” of me. Counseling and group talk therapy have aided this process… I realize that from the time I was young, any time I was hurt physically or emotionally, the response was always “you’re fine” and we moved on. There was no discussion about it, no tell me how you feel, let’s walk through this and learn how to experience and deal with these emotions. I’m not saying my parents did it wrong, they gave me way more than they got from their parents… but I recall being in a really bad car accident at 17 years old, my car was totaled. I hit black ice, crossed the median on the parkway and smashed into a mountain. I walked out of it with a large bruise on my ass and nothing more. I remember being in the ER at 4am crying to my Dad that I just wanted to go home. Upon waking up from the accident at home the next day, my mother took me to the car dealer to buy a new car and I test drove the car. That was how we handled my car accident. Ok you’re fine, let’s get a new car. There was no discussion about how I could have died in that accident, we just went about our business and got a new car.

Fast forward to my jeep coming out of the lock position and rolling through my neighborhood and crashing into someone’s yard. Totaling the car. That could have killed someone walking down our street. Could have ran me over if I was walking behind it. I bought a new car. It was time anyway, right?

One year later, driving home from a beautiful afternoon with my friend, a car drives into my lane and hits us head on at 50 MPH, totaling my jeep. I walked out of that one unscathed physically as well. Someone drove straight at me. We saw it coming. We knew he was driving right into us. We watched as possibly the last moment of our lives was upon us. Yes. I walked out of it. Bought a new car. The exact same car to be precise, like it all never happened.

It took me getting a disease that is generally equated with death to realize I’ve cheated death many times.

That’s trauma. I’ve not been taught well how to deal with trauma. Pretend it didn’t happen and just keep moving. But it builds and now I see it. I could have died, and my coping mechanism was to just replace that car with the same one so internally I could just pretend it didn’t happen.

People tell me all the time how great I look. You would never know I’m doing chemo. I seem totally fine. I’m doing stuff still.

That is by my design.

As much as I’ve shared here, and I’ve shared a lot, I haven’t been 100% honest. This has been hard. The AC Chemo was hard. The taxol is much easier physically than AC was but still has its hard parts. I’m tired, all the time. My body aches. My fingers have lost sensation, it’s not painful just weird. My eyebrows are almost all gone, as are my eye lashes and of course my hair. I do not look like I’m “glowing” without makeup. I do not leave my house without makeup even to go to my Chemo treatment. So when you see me, you see what I want you to see.

I push through doing activities other than work because I don’t want my life to stop because of this. This has already taken a lot away from me, I don’t want to miss everything. But I’m tired now… I’m halfway through taxol and as much as I want to keep pretending this is easy, it’s not.

I don’t want to just replace the car anymore. I want to work through it.

So here is me. My broken car, my make-up less face. 💗