Alone Again by Choice

When the man I had grown interested in first discovered my messed up breast, and heard me talk to him about it, I had to bring it all out at the start, it's only fair to inform an interested party of what he may be getting himself into, he told me that he would heal me he would be instrumental in healing me.

I liked the sound of his words and the certain feeling he conveyed through them. He surprised me with the confidence he seemed to feel, and I relaxed as I kissed him, straggled across the top of him, legs everywhere, his hair in his eyes and mine drooping across his cheeks. I pressed against his chest, the heat was heavy and wet, I hadn't been with a man for a very long time and I liked this one.
Suddenly, I noticed the blood on his chest, under my breast. It had streaked down across his ribs and onto his stomach. My breast was bleeding through the bandage and the lingerie. I'd pressed too hard into him, passionately, and jumped up and ran to the shower. I took everything off, and had a quick wash, blotting the breast with wet bandage and waiting for the blood to stop.

I could see his face as he slunk into the bathroom to be closer to me and get himself a towel. His face was white and his focus was clear. The towel moist, he checked himself out in the mirror and cleared his body of my blood as orderly and quickly as he could.

I kept my smile on, inside I felt everything collapse. This was going to be too much, I'd be lucky if he stuck around, I had no right to get myself involved with someone else, have them have to deal with this cancer, have them have to feel and think all the emotions and thoughts they would have to experience being with and liking me.

Well, once we were all washed off, we got back into bed and slunk into a friendly embrace. The passion had no place, we were starting over again, as though it were the first night, circling each other feeling what could be going on.

After that, I had to be very careful not to rub myself against his chest, an activity I used to love with all my lovers, the freedom to press against the other, to feel their body, their strength, to let them feel my excitement at being so close to them, caressing with my breasts the skin of their chest.

I made sure the right breast was always lifted away from him. I never again pressed, or made contact in more than the lightest way. I had to make sure he could be comfortable, he had to know I was considering him, and it came out, he admitted he was squeamish at the sight of blood.

But this breast this tumor bleeds, I thought. It has to. It's an open wound and often, contact jars the edges, and the skin breaks and at other times, usually when i remove a dried bandage that's been on it all day, too quickly, a thin spurt of blood, like a fountain, bursts into the air, hitting my skin and anything in its way. The shower wall gets painted with my blood, mixing with the water, running down onto the ground and into the drain, getting paler and paler as it disappears.
Gushing out of me, hitting the wall, the plastic glass divider, spurting like it's never going to stop. I put my finger on it to plug it up. I remove my finger and the thin powerhouse streak shoots out again. Somehow, it's fascinating to me. People would think I was touched to feel this way, some would rush me to hospital, to have it all fixed up, cut off, bandaged up, sanitized. But it just isn't going to go that way for me. I feel it. I'm seeing it all, I'm experiencing the natural removal of the tumor, day after day, year in and year out. Knowing, that the body takes care of it all, wanting to keep me whole because I am whole.

As the months progress, I notice he stops paying any attention to my good breast, something he had done at the start. It's as though it doesn't exist for him. When I ask him about it he doesn't want to talk about it. This disturbs me, because where can you go with a person who won't talk?

And then, I'm required to keep the area covered up more often, so that he doesn't have to see the tumor in its many incarnations. If I bleed at night in the shower, I keep quiet about it, and eventually, he stops showering there himself and begins to use the second bathroom as his own.

Conflict increases, mostly around sex. I want it more often and more exploratory than he does. I'd like him to open his eyes more while we're fucking, and keep his clothes off when we sleep together, but he doesn't want or need to make those changes. Not even for me. Not even once in a while. He feels I'm trying to control. I feel he's moving away, he's chilling up under me, he's leaving.

And then something awful happens, he tells me he's changed his mind about doing something for me that he'd offered to do way back, something that would make me more stable in America, and I had trusted his word and now I saw how foolish I'd been. How it's so much better to wait and be certain, not to allow romance and all the good feelings of 'love' lead the way.

I tell him he has to move out. It's been too mean between us for a while. The recession had hit our souls despite us knowing it was all up to us. My money is me, it springs out of my body, my actions, my focus in this world.

He leaves and takes just about everything he owned.

And I'm living here alone.

One week later I realize something I'd been running from my whole adult life.

This knowing that I can no longer look to anyone to make me feel good, whole, happy, real.

It's me only, I'm here alive with myself and this fact was what I had been avoiding always, what with the sugars, cakes, breads, cigarettes, clove cigarettes, drugs, joints, sex.

I finally faced the facts. Until I can accept that I am my best bet, I am all I have, I must enjoy every minute of myself, while knowing I could never be enough, yet its where I must start.

It sounds like a cliche, but yes, I do like who I am. And the person I am makes me laugh, and helps me sleep, knows how to eat, wants to end all death in me, can change on a dime and will move on continuously.

I am out to settle it once and for all, that I do not need a man. I do not need to cover myself up anymore with negativity, control, bitchiness, fear, disease, aging and death.

I have everything I need to live, make money, and draw people to me. I have decided to relax into me and get going with all the things I have to create, achieve, enjoy and prosper from.
Those sad sack thoughts 'oh, no one will want me, look at my breast', 'people hate cancer and don't know what to do with it,' 'it's easier to stay alone until this is all over, but what if it takes another few years, do i really have to stay away from intimacy for that long?'
Can you see how death is endless? And how switching it off is simple?

I'm saying no to such thoughts and hard feelings. I'm nourishing myself with rest and joy and connections with others in my life.

Meeting a man to be intimate with will be the icing on the cake.