signed on the right side- don't get it wrong.

There is a time when one reaches a certain level of fear that forces words to be deemed meaningless & the way to cope is not to convey, but to internalise said anxieties & to fold into oneself & into a state of silence.

Now that I am post-op, I can actually talk about it.

Several months ago, I found a lump in my breast. Needless to say, I was terrified; however, with no history of breast cancer in my family, I was hopeful that it was benign.
Regardless, having a lump the size of a golf-ball sitting beneath the skin, so prominently on my chest was a sickening thing to live with- I cannot begin to explain the hatred that I felt for a freak lump of cells, the extent to which I wanted it gone.
After some scans and consultations, the abnormality was diagnosed as being a fibroadenoma-

...small, solid, rubbery, noncancerous, harmless lumps composed of fibrous and glandular tissue. Because breast cancer can also appear as a lump, doctors may recommend a tissue sample (biopsy) to rule out cancer in older patients. Unlike typical lumps from breast cancer, fibroadenomas are easy to move, with clearly defined edges.

Though the fact that it was non-cancerous was phenomenally reassuring, this did nothing to defeat the fear of surgery. Whatever fear I had for being sliced open, though, was equally rivalled by my desire to have the thing removed.

Friday morning at 7am I went into pre-op: being sheparded from level to level, to room to room, I slept in a strangely nauseous state in an attempt to quell my anxiety.
By the time I had reached the operating table, I had been stripped of all of my own clothes & no longer felt any sort of fear- one must realise the inevitability of what awaits them when they are wheeled, prostrate & effectively locked in a hospital bed, so far away from one's starting-point that no noting of doorways passed & turns made can hope to make a map back to the beginning.
Not that I thought of running away. At least no more than twice.
I don't recall when the anaesthesia hit- I remember wondering when my vision would begin to blur, but don't remember it blurring. I simply awoke in another bed & proceeded to think that the procedure must be about to begin, only to realise that it had been completed over an hour beforehand.

There was no pain at all yesterday, say for the point in my arm where the needle had gone in. This morning I awoke because I had turned onto my right side & experienced an ache so great that it was as if my skin was being pulled inside out from a single small incision.

I feel like a doll on a production line, stitched back together for better use in future. I am beyond relieved that it is over- but now, as opposed to having something that feels evil & foreign within me, I can feel the flesh expanding like a blood-filled sponge to fill in the space that has been left, bruising & swelling on the surface as my insides repair themselves.

My body is close to no longer belonging to me, anyway- I starve it, I scar it, I abuse it in innumerable ways & let it be used by people for their own means & sometimes I look down at my skin & truly believe that I am dead on the inside & am slowly rotting outwards.