I've adopted a habit of writing, when ever possible, whatever thoughts come to mind in my notebook and letting them develop on the pages. When it isn't convenient to whip it out, I try to focus on one thought long enough for the ideas to jell. I get annoyed when people say they have ADD. I lump ADD in the same category as Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. I think, for myself, my creative energy is blocked and so my thoughts just sort of pile up on top of themselves, half complete and fleeting.
It's been an invaluable help. I've made myself a loose five-year plan and thought through my ultimate life goals. I've created a to-do list with ultimatums and such. I've made a growing list of reoccurring thoughts for meditation. I feel like peace is not far away.
I found something strange behind my left nipple yesterday. It's feels like a hardened duct. It doesn’t appear on my right breast. I was petrified at once, nerves humming, heart rate gaining momentum. Had I done this to myself? The moment my mother discovered my jewelry, she blurted that I'd get cancer. Nonsense, I thought then. After three years, the piercing has not totally healed. I have no pain, no discomfort. As coincidence would have it, the strange thing sits on the left side of my breast, the same side as the hole in my nipple that hasn’t healed. My family has a laundry list of hereditary ailments, both harmless (bunions, dry skin, excess hair) and depressive (sickle cell anemia, stomach ulcers, uterine cysts). My father may have died of lung cancer, his mother lost a seven-year battle against breast cancer. I wrote the following thought as it came to me on the express train to work this morning:
I'm not so much worried about dying too soon as I am about losing a body part or an organ, something close to me that I've grown to know and love. I love my breasts and the thought of losing them makes me sad. What could replace them? I'm scared of the end of affection, and of living abnormally, or of carrying more secrets, being even more self-conscious. "Dying is easy, it's living that's pain" (lyric from Cotton Eyed Joe by Terry Callier); that unstoppable train, its chugging and whistling still faint in the far, far distance, to come into view some day, any day. Inevitable, no matter the protests. I'll make peace when she comes. I just don't want a difficult life in the mean time.
My goal is to leave this earth with all my pieces. I pray that I can look back at my life and tell the people who have come to say goodbye that I was happy and that I did not fail at life, that I was a success.
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