Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Perfect From The Bottom to the Top

It was 1989 and my hair was short; my thoughts were long.

I had already flown three-quarters of the way across the continental US to get away from an abusive marriage; I had already sat through bankruptcy court and then divorce court. Three days after I left that husband in Clarksville I met my next husband in Huntington Beach.

Such is life; there is no moratorium on misery. You grab on to happiness when it is there.

And so it was that I had a great job with medical benefits; I was thin; I was athletic; I was a decent mom, not great, but definitely unobjectionable; my son was healthy and in Montessori daycare; I had a great guy. The car accident that nearly took our lives that same year had happened; the lawsuit was almost settled; the acute injuries were gone and the chronic injuries had not yet begun.

My life compared to just three years earlier was so good; so much better. Yet, my spirit; my physical body and my mind did not match. It sounds so vapid; so stale and innocuous.

I wanted bigger boobs.

Here's the deal: When I became pregnant with the Hero, the first clue I had even before I knew I was pregnant, and before I took a pregnancy test, a mini-chemistry set, really; one of those old-fashioned early home pregnancy tests with an actual beaker that you had to set in a holder and wait a whole lifetime's worth of 10 minutes before you looked for the solid ring upside down in the ridiculous little mirror provided and before the hyperemesis and the 12-pound weight loss and before the 19-pound pregnancy weight gain, was how quickly and absolutely beautifully large and full and gorgeous my breasts had become--my body was perfection.

I was shaped like a perfect hourglass.

Now, because a couple of the men in my life also read this blog and I don't want their heads' to explode, I will simply say that my breasts did not stay that way and there was quite a bit of  "volume loss" to say the very least and the absolute most. So, with the help of a very generous ride-or-die who lent me $3600, I was able to procure for myself a very safe and very straight-forward breast augmentation over the 1989 Fourth of July weekend. It was all very simple and civil.

And if you knew me before, you knew that then because I never hid a moment of it. I never tried to make it appear as if that was the way I had been all along; that was not is not my MO.

Fast-forward to my surfing accident of last October with the interventional radiologist ready to place the tube into my chest that would allow me to breathe and with me half in and half out of the CT tube and tapping the signature line of the Consent to Treat Form informing me that although I had to have the chest tube to breathe my implant could be ruptured in the process among a litany of other horrendous and inquisitional-like atrocities, but BT-dubs, no worries, the implant was already ruptured ::continuing to tap line:: I signed and then I was able to breathe and I immediately started to worry about that implant.

And I have continued to worry. Well, worry no more as worry has turned to action because it has become obvious--let's just say it REALLY has became obvious and holy shit summer is coming!

And because I have a really hard time operating in ambiguity, I feel compelled to tell my friends and the ones that I love and the girls I see every day at my gym and at work what needs to be done and how it will be done and why it will be done because in the back of my mind and the front of my heart I do not want another woman to feel less-than or ashamed about how she feels about her body or how she may want to change it.

That is if she is so inclined--if not, well, she is perfect from her bottom to her top.

I am telling you all this tonight because tomorrow morning at 6:00am I am going to my original 1989 plastic surgeon for, "bilateral open breast capsulotomoties, revision augmentiation with silicone gel implants and bilateral vertical mastopexies" to correct my 25-year-old Dow Corning silicone gel implant situation.

Basically, a boob job.

That's all. No ambiguity; no pretense; no pretext or charade. Just me needing to make my outsides match my insides. It really is that simple. I really am that simple.

And other than that one thing, I am perfect from my bottom to my top.


xoxo Darya


PS - The attached picture is from my cousins wedding in 1987. That beautiful blue brocade Victoria Secret strapless dress is taken-in approximately three inches on each side of the bust. After surgery in 1989, I had the alterations removed altogether, and I proudly rocked that number until it literally fell off of my body in rags. For the record that was the only item in my closet that needed to be "adjusted" postoperatively further confirming to me that my outsides did indeed fit my insides.

xoxo D