to babble or not to babble

rudy says he thinks a breast scar would look sexy!

i’ve been thinking a lot about leanne’s comments. for the record, i don’t think this is *not* a big deal. but it doesn’t seem as much in my character to worry about the things that *are* happening. seems i’m much more comfortable dwelling upon all those things that aren’t happening but that might happen given any set of bizarre, tragic, and/or esoteric circumstances. just visit me before i fly to know this. or ask my mom and dad about my sheer terror over the toaster those nights in sacramento. just like ruth reichl, which i might say with just a hint of pride, i sometimes panic before the bay bridge and need to visualize atlas holding it up just to cross it. but when it all comes down to it and i finally get on that bloody plane, i tend to be quite calm (ok… so there’s valium to blame too).

so i’m not as anxious as i was – in particular – in the long days after i got that first letter last july. the letter was so naggingly vague, and made clear that i could do absolutely nothing until i scored the next appointment for a mammogram. i had no idea what they noticed going on in my breasts, hanging like two dark and mysterious orbs. i feared it was something really bad.

but now, it’s like light shining into my left breast. i feel an idea of what might be going on inside, and have an appointment to find out for certain. and i am promised a brand not unlike valium for a ‘monitored’ anesthesia. i have met the surgeon and she has looked directly in my eyes. i feel like she’s seen every kind of thing moving into this gigantic and growing circle, this non-exclusive club of people to whom calcifications and biopsy have happened. the more i talk about it, the more women say “me too” or “my friend so-and-so” — nobody DOESN’T seem to know someone with this. i’m not alone. and there’s eve, who’s water glass i must have drunk out of. and there’s leanne, taking notes on the whole thing. so there’s company.

also, and this might sound strange, but i like the attention. a biopsy – as validation (?!). and i feel taken care of.

or at least terribly common.

so i realize these might be illusions just the same, but they’re a better reality than i could otherwise dream up.

now that i’ve made the flight analogy, i’ve been lost combing through my old posts and my babbling capacity for psychofear, but again, about those things that aren’t happening (yet). and yet, yet i do distinctly remember walking up a hill in sf in june or in august 2001, looking at the skyline, and being terrorized by the hallucination of a plane crashing into it.

and what am i doing up so early on a Sunday!