All it ever did was try to keep warm ...

Watering eyes turned into tears streaming down my face which turned into a genuine cry. As I sat with my head craned back in a hair cutter's chair in the middle of a canyon meadows salon, an east Indian woman with perfect eyebrows tried to comfort me by telling me how lucky I was to be alive. I am crying now just thinking about the experience. I realized after radiation that my face had become quite hairy ... Enough to make me self conscious. It was most likely the result of the inhumane amounts of steroids I was swallowing into my body, or I also understand it could have been my bodies attempt to keep warm as a reaction to the weight that I dropped to. So after looking into my options my sister and I headed off to try threading. She had done her eyebrows before and had found it way less painful than waxing. And since my skin is still really thin I thought that it would be the least irritating. In all honesty, today was the most physically painful part of radiation. And I think that there might just be something wrong with me because the whole experience was made more horrible by the fact that the lady kept telling me how I was such a sweet strong girl, and that I was doing this for beauty and wasn't I going to be beautiful, and aren't we lucky to be alive, and why don't I try praying. She was trying so hard to comfort me and my reaction was "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?" How she concluded that I was strong from my complete break down is beyond my understanding and how prayer helps ease the pain of someone twisting all the hair on your face between two pieces of thread and pulling it out tiny bit by tiny bit is ... Well just made me right pissed for some reason.
I am not really sure what happened in there today. Part of it was the pain, but I think part of it was just the release of pent up heartache and ouchiness. It was really embarrassing ... I could not calm down after. I really don't want to feel sorry for myself but I am coming to realize that I need to feel through this. Radiation for me was not just physical ... I tried to make it that. I am great at handling physical pain. I even have a twisted pride about it. But there was so much more to what I went through. I don't know how to put it into words yet. I wonder, I believe that you can learn to love something by watching someone who passionately loves that thing ... So can you understand the pain of something by watching someone who is living that pain? I don't know how to explain my experience... And I think that is because I don't really understand it yet. I know that there is something devastatingly powerful about choosing to poison yourself in the hope of life ... Of harming yourself because of hope.
I feel like Winnie the Pooh when he talked about how hard it can be to turn a thought outwards ... I just don't feel like I know how to verbalize what is going on. I am going to continue trying though.
I know that each time I fight my disease it changes my body, mind, spirit, and soul forever ... Once again I am left to reintroduce myself to my myself, to get to know its new quirks, and learn to embrace it. Even if we are talking about a bald, bearded, bruised, scared and chubby Heather.
My sister went home to Ireland tonight. Her home is Ireland now ... I cried the whole way home from the airport. What a day. AND I can't add picutres ... enought to drive a girl bonkers.