There are days when I look in the mirror and feel like cancer treatment has changed every single thing about me except the fact that I’m still expected to recognize myself.
My body has been cut open, stitched back together, burned by radiation, pumped full of medication, thrown into menopause, swollen by steroids, and exhausted by chemotherapy. My hair fell out, started growing back, changed texture, and somehow became another full-time problem. My weight has moved around depending on which medication I’m taking, whether I can eat, and whether my body has enough energy to do anything besides survive the day.
I know there are people who will read that and think I should just be grateful that treatment has kept me here.
I am grateful.
I also hate what it has done to me sometimes.
Cancer treatment does not just make you sick. It changes the way you see yourself. It changes how your clothes fit, how your face looks in pictures, how comfortable you feel being touched, and how long you stand in front of the mirror trying to figure out what the hell happened.
The changes don’t happen one at a time either. You don’t get a chance to adjust to losing your hair before your face starts swelling. You don’t make peace with one scar before another one appears. By the time you begin recognizing the person in the mirror again, another treatment comes along and changes her.
People love to call cancer bodies strong. They tell us our scars are beautiful and our bald heads are brave. They mean well, and sometimes I can believe them.
Other times, I don’t want my body to be a symbol of strength. I just want it to feel like my body.
I want to put on clothes without planning around swelling, scars, a port, or whatever part of me hurts that day. I want to take a picture without immediately studying my face. I want to get dressed for something important without my entire mood depending on whether I can hide the parts of myself I’m struggling with.
I want to care about how I look without feeling guilty because cancer is supposed to have given me more important things to worry about.
It has given me more important things to worry about. That doesn’t mean the smaller things stopped hurting.
I’m still twenty-eight. I still want to feel pretty. I still want to wear something that makes me feel confident. I still want Pete to look at me and see his wife, even though he has never made me feel like anything less. This is not about what he sees. It is about what I see, and some days I can’t see past everything cancer has changed.
I started going to the gym because I wanted to feel stronger and have some control over my body again. I also started because I don’t feel comfortable in it right now. Both reasons are true.
I’m not going to pretend every workout is some empowering moment where I reclaim my body from cancer. Sometimes I leave feeling proud of myself. Sometimes I look around at everyone else and remember how much easier movement used to be. Sometimes my body cooperates, and sometimes it reminds me very quickly that it is still going through treatment.
There is a strange kind of embarrassment in struggling with body image while you have stage four cancer. It feels petty compared to everything else. I have scan results to worry about, medications to remember, and symptoms that could mean absolutely nothing or something terrifying. Yet I can still have my entire day ruined by a picture I don’t like.
That is the part people don’t always understand.
Cancer does not make you stop being human. It does not erase insecurity. It does not automatically teach you to love every version of yourself. Sometimes it makes loving yourself much harder because the person looking back at you keeps changing without your permission.
I wish I had something beautiful to say about finally accepting all of it, but I’m not there.
Some days I can look at my scars and understand what my body has endured. Other days I cover them. Some days I like my short hair. Other days I miss the person I was before losing it. Some days I feel proud that I made it to the gym. Other days I am angry that being comfortable in my own body has become another thing I have to work for.
I am trying to be kinder to myself, but trying is not the same as succeeding.
Right now, body image during cancer treatment looks like wanting to improve what I can while knowing some things are outside my control. It looks like doing my hair before an event because feeling pretty still matters to me. It looks like wearing shapewear under a dress if it makes me feel more comfortable. It looks like taking the picture even when I might hate it later.
It also looks like admitting that I am struggling instead of turning every painful thing into a lesson about gratitude.
I don’t hate my body. I don’t love it every day either.
Mostly, I’m trying to learn how to live in it while it keeps becoming someone I haven’t met yet.
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