The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance
Friday, June 8, 2007 
The days have never moved so slowly as they have over the last month. Cancer is a millstone around time's neck, breaking down its pace into minutes that drag themselves forward with all the energy of a sloth on antipsychotics.
It must be this waiting that I am doing. I wait and I wait and I wait. I want them to take my uterus tomorrow; I want them never to take my uterus at all. Each thing I do, each thing I consume, is there to fill in the empty stretch from one moment to the next. All things are knots in the string that lead me to my nearest destiny.
I keep remembering back to when I was kid. Even when I was as young as two, I was annoyed with my corporeality. There it was, and it seemed so unnecessary. I felt that I was not properly glued to it, and I would fantasize about losing a finger to an axe or a leg to a car. Now, after all this time, I get to lose some of this meat machine I would have avoided had anyone asked for my take on it. The how and the when and the why are so unpredictable in life, but somehow it seems fitting that I should be scheduling the removal of my uterus through little tubes.
The growing melancholy in which I am swaddled makes less and less sense as I move closer to my as yet undeternined surgery date. Part of me looks forward to being free of this piece of my anatomy. No matter what birth control I was using, every month was a fretful waiting game to see if my period would come, and the terrible burden of the to-spawn-or-not-to-spawn question has made me angry for years. Being rid of this organ filled with so much undesirable potential is a dream I have had for a long time, but now that it is here and much less of a choice than I would have had it be, I am sad. Suddenly it feels like saying goodbye or going to a funeral.
I hope that, on the day of the surgery, it is raining and grey outside and that the taxicab that picks me up is shiny and black. I could be distracted by the tragedy and romance; I could wrap myself up in the ease of mental descriptions. I would think words like saturnine and suffused, and when the cab driver turned around to ask directions, I would think leonine and untidy. The seat would be spent and the clouds would be teeming. The phonemes would cradle my thoughts against the day's events. I would be a character. I could have another name.
Reader Comments (15)
You're going alone? In a cab?
Even if you had chosen to not have children before the cancer diagnosis, you made a CHOICE. Now the surgery is stripping you of that power you had in chosing. No matter how anyone in life has wronged us, it's when our bodies betray that we hurt the most.
Thinking hard about you, slugger. If you ever need anything you've got unlimited credit with me.
I've had parts taken.
The surgeon was pretty cavalier: {testily} "Oh, it's not like you need that to live." {/testily}
One weird thing is feeling like an amputee afterwards. Once the scar heals and you're walking around with no visible missingness, it's hard to justify all the loss you still feel. And it's kind of too bad that you feel you have to justify it, to some people.
I wish you the most compassionate doctors and nurses, the swiftest recovery, the strongest pain pump, the best Jell-o (with no skin), and wardmates in comas for the duration of your stay.
-Jenn
YOU ARE NOT GOING IN A CAB.
You will let me know when you need to be there, and I will drive you there, and take you home.
Kapiche?
i can't help but say that you write so beautifully. in that sense this is bringing out the best in you.
again, my best wishes.
Is it wrong that I think this is a beautiful post?
You've captured this moment so well - I can't help but love it, because I can feel it.
Is it wrong that I hope it rains? That I wish for the sky to cry?
I have always felt there is a strange and wild beauty in grief, in my own and that of others.
Your post is filled with both, as it should be...
This is a beautiful post. Also, I will lend you my fabulous belted trench coat and big sunglasses for the day, if you'd like, as it will add to the atmosphere you're looking for.
I had a medically necessitated hysterectomy at 27. I remember the sadness very clearly. I felt hollow.
Go ahead and grieve. Cry. It will get better in time.
Even if you didn't want to use your uterus there was a choice involved. You chose not to have children. Now that choice is being taken away. It's not weird at all. I think is really normal, same with the ambivalence. Take care.
I have been reading all these posts since you were diagnosed, and haven't commented. I've been teary reading them, but didn't feel I could add much consolation.
Anyway, even though you will be relieved of the weighing questions that come with this particular piece of anatomy, you are losing a part of yourself. No matter how you feel about that part, it's sad. And angering that it's being taken forcibly. And a relief. And probably a whole bunch of other stuff.
A rooster is called that because he roosts over clutches of eggs and guards the area around them-- your symbolic rooster is in the perfect spot.
Best thoughts and wishes I can muster.
Waiting is a hell all its own, but once the waiting's done, you suddenly wish for it back. I wish I had better words that "I'm sorry. I'm here if you need me," but those are the best I can offer. I've been lurking for a bit, but you have to know: I'm thinking of you.
I had skin cancer removed once -- and I remember that even that little thing, brought back a flood of memories from my childhood -- searching for clues of when I had been violated -- when did it start. But, at the same time, I felt a freshness, a newness -- a chance to start again. Holding you in my thoughts.
Man that's beautiful.