I remember distinctly sitting in movie theaters when I was pregnant. At various points throughout the film I’d tune out the words and images and get lost in my belly, feeling each of my children squirm and wriggle and stretch. “What if this is it?” I’d think to myself. “What if I go into labor right here, right now?” And then I’d think to myself, “In just a week or two I’ll be a mother, mother to a person whose body is inside mine but whose face I have not seen, whose voice I do not know, whose skin I have not touched. I’ll be mother to this person for his or her entire life, my life will be shaped by his, and his by mine.” And those thoughts seemed incomrehensible to me at the time. Too large, too vast.
Then four years ago my little mental interludes changed form. “I have cancer,” became the thought that was too big to wrap my brain around. “Right now, while I am sitting here the cells are there. There is cancer in me. Right now,” I thought to myself. Eventually, after my double mastectomy, during my reconstruction, I could sit, arms crossed across my chest and feel the tissue expanders in me. And even now, I need only take a sharp, deep breath to feel the implants in there, reminding me of what has come to be.
Sometimes, when there is a lull in a movie, I still “check out.” Just for a few moments.
As if when I am sitting there,
in the theater,
away from everyday distractions,
lost in someone else’s life,
only then can I think about the larger things that haunt me.
The other night I found myself momentarily thinking about my body, and its cells. “Are there any cancer cells left?” I thought. “What if there are some still there, right now, dividing, multiplying, gathering momentum.”
I sat and wondered if they’re gone. If they’re not. I wonder what the plot will be, how it will end. My favorite movie endings are the ones where you get to see what happened to the characters– how things ended for them, what the final chapter was– an epilogue. I realize I can’t have that knowledge about myself. And I’m not really sure I’d even want to. I guess everyone likes a happy ending. That’s the only kind I really wish I could know about myself.
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That terrible wonder never fades for me. Every now and again, it becomes silent and sulks in a forgotten part of my mind, only to come roaring back at the first odd twitch or familiar ache. I hope to become deaf to it one day. For now, I ignore it much like I would a crying child in a movie theater.
Lisa, I was in my Oncologist’s office yesterday and I realized that there were no
mirrors on the wall. I didn’t ask anyone about this but, I thought that the whole no
mirror thing was deliberate…maybe looking into a mirror is the last thing that a
patient wants.