Ode to My Breasts

It seems fitting I should reflect a little on my breasts as my impending surgery looms ahead and soon they will be gone and replaced by bags of silicone. I have a total love hate relationship with my breasts. They arrived the summer I was going in to eighth grade. They weren't a total shock, as I had seen my older sister Hannah grow a similar pair, just a lot earlier than me. Hers arrived while still in grammar school, sixth grade, and I am sure she could do a similar ode to hers as they affected her life as much as mine have affected my life. Before that summer, I was like most of my friends wearing those silly useless white cotton Calvin Klein bras with elastic bands for support just so we could feel like little adults. But after that summer, I was lurking up in the lingerie department of Nordstroms spending my birthday money my grandparents gave me on an underwire over the shoulder boulder holder Wacoal Wonder which was the kind of bra that had such wide straps, I stopped wearing tank tops. The texture was so crazy, I stopped wearing thin t-shirts because you could see the lumps and pattern underneath. The fabric was like brocade. Like wearing a polyester brocade slipcover on my breasts. My posture changed as I hunched over to hide the albatross that was growing on my chest. As my other friends (all relatively small breasted comparably) pleaded with whatever their young minds believed in at the time for larger breasts and outwardly complained in front of me, I rolled my eyes coveting their ability to wear bikini tops, tank tops and summer dresses with thin straps. I stopped fitting in to my age group of clothing because the tops were too small (and the bottoms always too long because I am short too). Shopping was a nightmare. My poor mom. She wasn't equipped (literally, she didn't have the boobs me and my sisters got at all) to handle the emotional stress of shopping with a teenager when nothing fit.
My dad has always told me and my sisters that boobs make men stupid. I don't quite know what he was trying to instill in our young minds, but I do know this. They made him stupid. As soon as we all started developing, the man disappeared. One moment he was our softball coach and our wrestle buddy, the next he was on a self imposed exile up in his bedroom cataloging stamps and painting army men in some attempt to avoid realizing we were becoming woman, with breasts.
The first time I saw how dumb they can make the opposite sex myself is when my now a freshman in high school sister allowed me to tag along to a basketball game at her school when I was still in eighth grade. Hannah was already blossoming in to the social butterfly she would eventually become and had befriended a ton of older kids. As they milled about in front of the gym, we joined a big group. She rightfully introduced me as her little sister and one of the kids, an older boy, looked at me and said I didn't look like her. And at the time I didn't. She had blonde hair, she has green eyes and smaller features in general. And then, I guess I turned towards him and, with the confidence only a cocky teenage boy can have, looked right at my chest and said, 'Oh, yeah. You're her sister'. In that one moment I was horrified and oddly proud. My breasts had identified me.
So then, I guess after awhile, my breasts made me stupid. Really stupid. I attracted the attention of older men (not my husband--but that sleazy older man/boy group of men who prey on younger high school age girls). At fourteen, my breasts made me look nineteen and so I went along with it. I'm not blaming them, but sometimes I wonder. If I wasn't so outwardly sexual looking without doing anything to be sexual than just be, would I have gotten in to the situations I invariably found myself in? I'll never know. Boy did I get stupid. During my senior year I got fed up and stopped trying to hide them. I started wearing tight wrap tops and walking around with flowers in my cleavage. I got voted Biggest Flirt and Most Likely to End Up Living on a Nude Island by my classmates. I allowed my cleavage to be photographed as a prank, the photo snuck in during our graduation ceremony slideshow. My breasts had taken away my power and now I was finding it back, but in all the wrong ways.
I wasn't respecting my breasts. I wish I had.
So speaking of my husband. Here's the irony. He's not even a 'breast man' in the stereotypical sense. When were were first together, I had thought all I had to do was open up my shirt and he would see these breasts of mine and that would be it. Right? Boobs make men stupid and he would look past our age difference to be with me because I had these breasts. I was wrong. He pushed me away because I was nineteen years younger than him. He said we could just be friends. Later, after I had worn him down (with my wonderful personality and warm heart of course), he admitted that when he first saw them--he didn't know what to do. They overwhelmed him. I don't blame him. They overwhelmed me.
The sad thing is that I never got to use them for what they are here for. I never got to breast feed Sadie. I was on chemo when she was born and the risk of transferring chemicals was there, and so she has been formula fed. I watch Nina sometimes breast feed Sadie and I am so happy that she gets the opportunity and sad that it isn't with me.
As surgery gets closer and closer I am wondering why I am getting the reconstruction, especially after the not always wonderful history I have with these lumps of flesh on my chest. It feels superficial to care. I know Greg would love me whether I had breasts or not (now if I lost my butt, that would be another matter). I could wear something in my bra to make it appear like I have breasts. Maybe, like losing my hair, it will be freeing to just let it go. And then I think about Sadie. And she's turning thirteen and her breasts are starting to grow. I don't want her looking at a canvas of scars when she looks at her mom's chest. As much as my mom complained like all woman do about the way she looked, I know she was beautiful and I know that she felt beautiful too. I love that. I love that she felt beautiful. So, even though they drove me crazy and made me do stupid things and at times I wished I could have had them cut off, I need these breasts to make me feel beautiful and that's nothing to be ashamed of.
Love,
Rosalie
PS: Photo taken by Hannah and approved by Greg.