Again a break from the cancer thing. I hate when it rains in the city. Not because I hate the rain. Because I hate the people with the umbrellas. How they have the ones that jab you in the eye. Or How fewer people can walk on a sidewalk with the extra bulk. Or how there's that one guy, with a friggin' golf umbrella taking up half the street and wielding it around ensuring to knock you several times. It's annoying. I'm starting to become a fan of ponchos. Not that I'd wear one, but I see their appeal (although it is weird to see a whole family of tourists in a matching one in a place not Disney World).

I feel like I've always been at war with my body. That fight hasn't changed much. Although now the stakes are higher. I feel somewhat betrayed having got cancer. Trying to think if it was the countless diets I went on or the Burger King I love to indulge in now and again. Was it really the diet soda or frozen yogurt? I've always been on that weight roller coaster. The sick thing is that when I first found out that I had one of five things (but only two of them with names) and I realized that the treatment for sarchoidisis (sic) was Prednasone, I freaked. Like, no way am I going on a steroid for a month. I was like, at least let me get the thing that makes you skinny. Hey, I said it was a sick thought. And when I was first diagnosed I lost so much weight and was happy. Okay? That's how warped my mind is about this weight thing. People complemented me on how good I looked--one person actually said to me "You look like you did at your Sweet 16". And I was like "Thanks!" when I really needed to process and be like, uh, I'm a grown ass woman and I don't need to look like I'm 16. Plus, I'm so pale I'm almost translucent now and back then I had the nerve to be tan. The weight didn't stay down. I put it back on with the steroids. But I didn't gain more than five pounds over what I was, so that was fine.
And then when I went into the hospital with pneumonia and I was put on massive steroids for three weeks. I gained about twenty to twenty five pounds. I was devastated. Clothes I had bought in December, a mere month before, no longer fit. My face was bloated. I had to go buy new jeans. I was going back to work in elastic banded black pants; none of my suits fit. It was so hard for me. First my hair and then my weight. People couldn't understand. they were like--but you're better! you're living! I wish I could explain it, I really do. I wish i was better than that, not worrying about the petty pieces of life. But I'm not. They are still the things that bother me. I hated not fitting into my favorite clothes. I hated that I was bald and chunky and not looking like myself. I hated it more than being sick.
Radiation came and then I couldn't eat for a solid week. It hurt to swallow--first in my throat and then I would get a weird pain in my back. And for the last two weeks of radiation and then for about a week or two afterwards, I really didn't eat very much. I find, even now, that I have a reduced appetite. I've taken off about half of what I put on. And yeah, it's great to fit into my clothes again but I feel like I've won the battle but lost the war. Because, it should be that I'm healthy--walking four miles a couple of times a week--and that should be what i'm focused on. And i'm trying. I'm trying to not care about my fat jeans being in permanent rotation. Because the truth of the matter is that whoI am goes way beyond what I see in the mirror. Who I am, in my heart, is how i beat this disease. And I just can't let that self-doubt and self loathing win. because then the disease wins too. And I just can't let that happen.