balancing TMI with BTW
So how does it work? Once you’ve overcome a major illness, is there a decision to be made about what kind of recovered person you’re going to be? I knew a woman once who was run over by a car while sunbathing in a parking lot when she was 17. She’s in her 40s now, but every conversation––including the first I had with her––included this fact. Each time she would elaborate more: she was on cement, she broke ribs, she almost died. It was the event that defined her to the exclusion of almost anything else.
I’d like to avoid that, but at the same time, I don’t want to know people for a year and then have them be shocked that I went through cancer and chemo and all that.
My inner DQ (Drama Queen) loves my new mystery, my extra tragic layer of depth and insight into suffering. And she wants to wear it like a shimmery, feathery boa. Or a slippery, sexy secret you only get when you’re really, really close. How do you balance between the over-telling and the silent martyr? How do you dole out appropriate information about trauma? That’s not just rhetorical. Really, if you have any thoughts.
I got my first post-chemo haircut. At Xena’s on 13th Street. It was sweet. She asked about the length and I told her I had lost it and she immediately understood and said her mom did too. She told me about how they also cut her hair short when it started to go and then trimmed it when it started to grow. My hair came off in downy goldenish tufts. It felt so normal to be getting a haircut; a normal, non-forced haircut. In a salon with a leopard-print smock and everything. It looks cute. I’m thinking of keeping it this way.
Tomorrow’s a big day. Can’t say why, but things are unfolding and I feel sad and scared and excited. Not having any idea of what’s going to happen but doing my best to squint ahead to read the signs.
Okay, kisses. Night.
