after # 2: (journal entry, day 24 post op)

She sees that illness has made her more cautious. She oozes cautiousness. Everything must be planned out. Worst case scenarios must be considered and then, plans must be made for when they will happen. Not if. When . She feels the weight of her cautiousness in her daily life. Sometimes her heart moves too fast out of imagined things and what ifs. Her cautiousness means they have life insurance and a guardian for their son in case they die. They have health insurance and would have other types of insurance if they could afford it to guard them from other things they need to fear. This isn’t unreasonable, insurance, but what drives it makes her sad, worried, anxious.

 

Her husband chastises her for her moments of silliness as he is very serious,  but he has no idea how silly and free she can be. That level of silliness and freedom has been pushed down by many things, one being her health or lack of health. Never knowing what to expect, one diagnosis after another, the horrible realization that doctors know so very, very little about the mainly female specific illnesses she has acquired. And then the almost monthly sexual assault reports that come via email regarding female studentson the campus where she and her family live. She has become afraid of being female, of having this female body. Even after the hysterectomy, it’s still there.

 

But. On an early spring day, sitting in her glider, listening to silence, recovering from having every reproductive organ removed, she begins to remember who she is. There is some breathing room now and there is a reprieve from illness. There is perspective and there is mourning. She doesn’t want to let it slip away as it has before. She moves to the shower and prays, and in the quiet that comes after her prayer she hears one word and that word is dance.

 

Beneath the water she begins to hum a song and moves her arms slowly to the rhythm. She begins to sway her hips and then her feet take small steps out and back and there she is, being silly, being herself, being free, dancing to the song in her head as she cries and laughs and steps out of the tentative way she has been living in the world and in her body, a body recovering from surgery, recovering from illness, recovering from fear.