I Felt Like A Freak-Learning To Love My Flatness

Look. I know a feeling is just a feeling. I understand their importance. “You’ve got to feel it to heal it,” right?

I’m so convinced of this. It is something I tell friends and clients alike when they confess what they consider to be a “bad” feeling, like anger or jealousy.

Feelings are neither good nor bad. They are just feelings. Emotions. Or as I like to put it, energy in motion. E-Motions.

Emotions can be a powerful tool in driving us toward positive change. It is also a two-edged sword can also create great suffering-like hanging onto anger years after an offense.

So why the hell does this emotionally intelligent woman have a crisis in the YMCA locker room?

I felt like a freak. I felt shame.

It was the first time since my double boobectomy that I went lap swimming. Which meant donning my Speedo tank suit. And then peeling it off afterwards in the open locker room.

YIKES.

I’ve always been very modest, thanks to trauma from middle school gym class. The asshole teacher would lean against the side of the open showers, staring at our nekkid bodies to ensure we were cleaning ourselves properly. Shudder.

In my Catholic home growing up, nudity was very shameful, too.

And now here I am, a grown-ass woman re-experiencing body shame. Make that a grown-ass, boobless woman.

It started when I studied my new profile in the mirror in the locker room, I felt dismayed. My chest looks like a stick of gum. I never had large breasts and a tank suit isn’t built to flatter a figure-it’s for swimming. But I am looking flat, flat, flat.

The soft cups which formerly housed my boobs now lay flaccid. The cups themselves seemed bewildered too. Hey! We have a job to do! Where are our charges?!

It was like they were going on a search for my non-existent boobs, heading south onto my tummy.

I tried to pull them up so the outline wouldn’t call attention to my pancakeness. (Note to self: cut out lining. It’s not like there are any nipples to poke through.) And wait. Does this mean the breast stroke has now become the chest stroke? Ah. More things to ponder.

And then there’s the port scar. Nothing I could do about that. It’s plainly visible. It’s about 2 inches and there’s the smaller scar on my neck from where the catheter was stitched into a vein.

Scars be damned. It’s out to the pool.

I enjoyed my swim immensely. Even surprised myself that I could do 10 laps even though I haven’t swam laps for several months. Yay me.

After a stretch and a quick visit to the sauna (pronounce that sowna for the complete Yooper experience), it was the moment I was dreading.

The locker room.

Because they are renovating the bathroom, the shower stalls have no locks yet. A few lack doors even. I picked one farthest away and pulled the door closed as tightly as it would go.

After showering, I gingerly wrapped a towel around me only I don’t have any more boobs to hold it up, so this requires vigilance.

Shit. The locker room is full of women. Boobs are everywhere-mostly of the droopy variety, since these were mostly senior women. Most are in their own little modest world as they get dressed.

I am not ready to debut my scars to a room full of strangers. So, I poked about with my hair (which has stopped shedding, by the way! Yippee!) and other ministrations waiting for it to empty out.

My reaction to all this took me by surprise. On some level, I am proud of my scars. They remind me I am a survivor and am cancer free. I have even shocked myself by pulling up my shirt to show and tell with curious girlfriends. It’s not like there’s anything to see, literally. No breasts, no nipples. Think male chest minus hair and nipples. But you need to add in almost 1 ½ feet of a pink scar traversing the chest.

And now here I am, trying to keep a towel around me while getting dressed. When I finally dropped the towel, I made darn sure my top was ready to get pulled on lickity split.

I admire the courage of my pink sisters go shirtless; I really do. But I am not there. Perhaps it’s still just all too fresh and I remind myself the doc told me this is going to take a year to recover. I know she wasn’t just talking about the surgical wounds and chemo after effects.

I have learned over the years to be selective when sharing vulnerable stories. Not everyone gets into see the wizard, I tell myself.

Perhaps this is one of those things for me as well. I don’t have to be ashamed that I feel shame and discomfort over showing my scars off in a locker room. I imagine stares and sidelong glances. Maybe that will happen, maybe not.

It’s just how I feel right now. I feel raw and vulnerable. I recognize these are emotions. It’s a necessary part of my healing process.

I will embrace the feelings; send love to the emotional trauma I have endured. But in the meanwhile, I will continue to dress stealthily in the locker room.

And that is okay.

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