My first set of A's...

Well, I googled. Yep...googled. Googled pictures of what my new boobs would look like and as much as I love the idea of being factor new again, the lumpy, bumpy, asymmetrical mess that would be my rack is now history. I can still see the look on my plastic surgeon's face as he tried to help me realize Playboy has mislead us all...there are new boobs and there are new boobs. I like football as much as the next girl but it's a few pages over from melons which is the look I was going for so in the end, I am ordering nothing. It's not easy - how do your mourn your breasts? How do you say good bye? I used them alluringly in my 20s, fed my kids with them in my 30s and fought with and against them valiantly in my 40s. They have served me well but in the end, died in battle. The entire point of reconstruction is to make me feel more normal again. I can lose the prosthesis and stop staring in its tracks. I can wear sexy bras, I can wear cocktails dresses and I can grab whatever femininity is left after losing your hair and nearly your life. Really, I just wasn't ready to be out of the game. At almost 44, I was still hangin' in. My dad says, Man Plans and Gd Laughs. So there ya go...I planned. Glad I'm good on my feet. I am done. White flags flying...for now. I am going with the mastectomy but no reconstruction for now until the 100 plus billion dollars being pumped into breast cancer research comes up with a better model than what I was offered. Frankly, bumpy, lumpy and mismatched I can do on my own. So welcome A cups. Am I happy about this? No. Having two prosthesis will be my emergency set for when I break down or just need a moment of normal, but I will do my very best to embrace my new reality. I admit, clinging to a new set of boobs took me through some very dark moments. I hung in thinking on some level I MIGHT be a bit better off later - gave up two years and two breasts in exchange for a new set. It's like taking an old favorite pair of shoes in for a new pair - except you had to cut off your feet in the process. When I go back over it in my mind, I edit that part out. New boobs...it's all I hung on to. It wasn't denial - it was my feeble attempt to find the silver lining in a pile of dung but I kept digging. I'm willing to accept now that it just sucks. It's unfair and it doesn't always have to end well. I don't have to find the positive. I don't have to make everyone okay with it and I don't have to force myself into thinking A cups on a D cup body is perfectly fine. I don't have to tell myself saying goodbye to the body I once knew and the breasts I once had is easy and I won't publish myself saying this is nothing. It's everything. But it's my reality right now and I am done. There is some peace in that part. Being done feels a bit like a resting place. No more surgeries, no more idealizing, no more breast talk...yeah...It's been almost exactly two years since I said goodbye to one and now the other follows and I can move back home, back into my life and back into living and rocking forward. The stares be damned...beats the hell out of prosthetic travelling. No more fishing my breast up off the floor, the treadmill and the nightstand. It's. Just. Over. Grief stricken? You bet. Surrounded by amazing women, a superhero of a husband and four children who never looked at me as broken? Not once? Yes. And I now need them more than ever. I need them to remind me this will be okay. This will be over soon and I am still a victor. This is a clouded survival story - no happy ending but one I can live with and I am living. with. it. Living.