Enter the Dragon – PART TWO May 15, 2011

Please read Enter the Dragon PART ONE first!

From the first day I heard my dragon tattoo calling to me I have felt different about my body.  I look in the mirror and feel stronger, sexier, and more ME already.  But in order to get us together, I have some huge steps to undergo.

Imagine if you will the following phone conversation I made to Dustin, my new tattoo god:

“Hello, my name is Robyn.  I am a breast cancer survivor  with a mastectomy and I want to tattoo my chest.” (deep breaths)

“Okay, do you have a nipple?”   (gulp!)

“Nope”  (hyperventilating)

“As long as you are healed it shouldn’t be a problem”

No it shouldn’t be a problem…but it IS. Even admitting I don’t have a nipple makes me want to throw up. I am going to have to take my shirt off to show Dustin my chest to even start the process and then spend  hours shirtless while it is getting done!  The whole idea makes me sick. And excited.

Into Project Tattoo Studio I go — ALONE.  Nice, above average tattoo place empty except the three artists hanging out – young, dressed in black and off course heavily pierced and tattooed. As I explain to Dustin (my distantly related cousin) that I have a unique tattoo situation, he interrupts me:  “How do you catch a unique rabbit?”  I reply gleefully “ You NEEK up on it!”  This happens to be one of the very few jokes I can remember! The fact that this heavily tattooed, young, pierced guy I am about to bear my chest to randomly knows and tells me this joke feels like a sign from God.  I know here is no question that I am on the right path with the right guy.

And then comes the moment.

“Let’s see where we are putting this”.  Taking a deep breath, off comes my shirt.  In the middle of the shop.  Facing the windows and the door.  I whisper that no one has seen my chest up close except my boyfriend.  Dustin smiles as he keeps drawing – his is head full of making my dragon come to life and he dosn’t see what I am lacking.  I am shaking as I leave, so excited and nervous about what I have just done and what I am about to do.  I still have to wait two weeks to see the design he comes up with and I need time to sit with the magnitude of what is happening to me.

***

Dustin finally calls and sent me photo of “HER” on my phone.  I have been dreaming about him drawing – her coming through his hand onto the paper.  I don’t really know what she looks like, I am trusting  the artist to come up with his own version of my idea.  I trust this process but I am scared that I won’t like what he has drawn.  She is so strong….I don’t want it to be a biker tattoo….I am scared and I ask everyone I know what they think.

Neil and  I go in the next evening to see the drawing.  Neil is out of his element to say the least.  I am far more comfortable in this realm, but when Dustin pulls the drawing out I think I am going to pass out.  My face is so hot….

She is BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!  He has only drawn her head and she is bigger than I imagined – but she IS going on my whole torso. She will be my whole right side….my side of power starting in the curve of my pelvic bone and going  up to my armpit. Dustin wants to freehand tattoo her on my body in order to match my own contours and incorporate my scars into the design.  What a leap of faith that is to have someone draw on you without knowing FOR SURE what it will look like!  Breathing, I say yes to the process and make my appointment for 3 days later. We are planning 4-5 hours in the chair the first day to do all the lines and maybe 2 more sessions afterwards for color after the line-work heals.

In the car later, I ask Neil what he thinks and he mentions that no one will see her if she starts below my waistband.  I smile – it isn’t necessarily for anyone else to see , I say – this is for me.  Whatever anyone can see should only want to make them see more….which is exactly what I want – and not just about my tattoo.  I am so much more than this body.  So much more than the tattoo that is coming to life in me.

***

As the days pass there are big changes in me.  When I look in the mirror I don’t see my scar anymore and I don’t try to cover up all the time.  And  I make the decision to go to grad school to pursue a creative writing degree.  Being a writer is something I always dreamed about but never thought possible but somehow all the excuses for not doing it are gone.  Transformation is in the air and even Neil begins to make plans to pursue some long put off dreams.  Could all this be connected to the tattoo? I have always said that when you change one thing in yourself everything has to change accordingly because we are so connected.  Maybe deciding to act instead of to continue to  mourn has shaken this  little snow-globe of life.  I wonder how everything will land….

***

Finally it is time. I can’t sit still, I can’t eat, I am a mess.  Neil is going to be there to get it started and them my mom is coming to sit with me.  I take a Xanex as I am getting out of the car to settle my nerves because I am shaking.  Dustin sets up and says OK…and off comes my shirt.  Neil smiles at me and then we are off and running.

It is incredibly vulnerable to be shirtless for the world to see right by the front door, and I am completely exposed as Dustin draws the rest of the design on  my chest with sharpie. As the needles start, the other tattoo artists start telling jokes and I get the giggles until Dustin yells at all of us.  When the needles hit tender areas and then move up my rib cage there is no joking around as I breathe deeply to absorb and release the pain.  This hurts FAR worse than my other tattoo’s and often takes my full concentration.  Mom takes pictures and I am reminded of being in labor with my kids.

I am changing…I feel like instead of something being drawn on my skin, something is being drawn out of it.

Three hours later my pain level has peaked just as Dustin is finishing up.  I nervously stand up and look in the mirror and am in awe.  There are no scars, no discolorations, no sign that anything ever happened to me.  And She is amazing!  There are gaps in the design that will be filled in with shading and color as the weeks go by, but she is truly amazing.

With tears in my eyes I tell Dustin thank you – he has no idea what he has given me back.  As I leave the other tattoo artists ask respectfully if they can see the work Dustin has done, and I am proud to show them. For the first time in 2 1/2 years I am not ashamed of my body.  I can look at myself and see strength and beauty instead of loss and regret.   I have so much ahead of me and nothing is holding me in the past.

Enter the Dragon PART ONE May 12, 2011

It is a hard thing to communicate what is closest to the  heart and as much as anyone I often struggle with putting words to paper.  While I have written about body image here, I have  only touched the surface of how deeply traumatized I, and other young women, are at the loss of a breast.  Our breasts are such a revered part of womanhood, that losing one leaves us feeling less sexual, less feminine and thoroughly just  LESS. Regardless of the personal work one does around the issue, daily interactions  leave us back pedaling and struggling with what we KNOW deep down inside vs. what  we are being shown everywhere else. How we feel about ourselves internally and how we see ourselves is  in the mirror is often warped by society, our  histories and  fears. Regardless of how we project ourselves in the day to day world, these  insecurities follow us around and shape us without our intention.  The past 2  ½ years have been a daily emotional work out when I look at myself in the mirror trying to absorb, accept and get over  what has been done to my body in order to survive.  Everything about how I walked in the world changed when they cut off my breast.  It wasn’t intentional that I changed…I wanted to be the same as before… but the suddenness of diagnosis, the ensuing  trauma, and the loss of a piece of my sexuality took its toll.  While I lost less then I gained, a piece of self confidence/self perception was gone that I felt I would never gain back.

Most women who have a mastectomy these days have a smallish scar in an even line across their chest.  Many are still able to keep their nipple and surrounding areola so that reconstruction is more natural looking.  Most younger women choose to pursue reconstruction fairly quickly and while the new breast is not the same as the old, at least it is there.  Not so with me.  I had so much cancer in me that they took everything on my right side, right down to the muscle, damaging nerves as they scraped away tissue. While it initially looked good and I was surprised at how small the incision was, in the end, my surgical wound wouldn’t heal  – my body rejected the stitches  and I was left with a gaping hole in my chest for weeks. From a tidy simple line following careful surgery, it turned into a gnarly scar tissue filled gash.  The moment that healed, I started radiation which again didn’t go as planned and left scaring and discoloration from third degree burns from my armpit across and down my ribcage.  Needless to say all of this contributed to me not wanting to do any more surgeries out of fear of the side effects. Besides, the damage had already been done and nothing would make it look better.  No matter how much time I put into the emotional and physical healing of my body it is still difficult to cope with when I see myself in the mirror. Of course, this is all my own perception of what I see – it is probably not as bad as I think it is – but how I feel about myself is all that matters.

I have tried to get over it, tried to accept it and tried to be bigger than what I look like.  And, mostly,   I have.  Facing that gash every day I have learned so much about myself, about how I grew up feeling about my body and the results of abuse and our hyper sexualized society. I have observed the way I have changed, the way I have held back, and how different I feel about my physical self now that I can no longer claim a standard of “normal” attractiveness.  I have written, thought, prayed about and explored the issues around healing the physical and emotional wounds that cancer opened up for me.  The irony of having my surgical wound heal so slowly is not is not lost on me as I still struggle with self-acceptance in the face of the amazing power and strength I have shown.

In the end I realized that I get to chose how I see myself, regardless of the visual evidence left in the aftermath of disaster.  I do not have to be sad, embarrassed, ashamed or angry.  I don’t have to force myself to accept the unacceptable.

So, I began to think about what it would take for me to feel good about what I saw in the mirror.  I certainly did not need to recreate a breast – I am over the whole thing about that particular body part being  important and I have given enough time to cancer.  But I can’t stand the scar…I can’t stand having to see the ugliness when I don’t feel like the experience itself was ugly.  While some people can wear their scars as a testament of their strength, my scar still reminded me of all that I was forced to change, about how life goes haywire despite your precautions, and how little control I have.   I needed to change that scar into a thing of beauty and strength that reflected who I have become.

And so SHE came to me one day. SHE is a dragon….multicolored colored and smiling but fierce, powerful, beautiful , and proud.  She represents the protector, wisdom, luck, prosperity, transformation and the ability to adapt to all elements.  She is cross cultural appearing in both eastern and western mythology and is revered everywhere for her ancient knowledge.  Where there is dragon, there is treasure hidden deep within.

And so she will be tattooed on my torso….she is not hiding my scar, she is encompassing it and making it part of her own body.  She will move my eye’s line of sight to what IS there  – the beauty and fierceness – and away from what is no longer.  The focus is shifted for me from loss to creativity, from what happened to me to what I chose for myself.  It is not a hiding from what is or trying to go back to what was, it is an open hearted acknowledgement that cancer happened….and here is what I did with it.

While this may seem like a radical decision and is certainly not an option most would consider, I welcome the opportunity to shape my body – and my experience  - in a unique, strong and beautiful way.  I am not doing this for anyone but me and I have the feeling that she is going to teach me much in our journey together.  I can’t wait!