Naked

I haven’t been out of the house since last Thursday. I’d say I’m getting cabin fever except… I’m kind of “content” to just hide in my bed for awhile.

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I took a shower. A 4:30 in the morning. I needed to be clean. Confession? I haven’t showered since last Thursday either. Why bother? It’s not like I’m going anywhere. Who cares. I don’t do anything, or work up a sweat. It’s not like I have hair to keep clean.

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Call it a full on depressive slump.

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But I took a shower. And I realized why I’ve resisted it so much. It’s been 3 weeks (?) since my hair started falling out, since I shaved my head. I’m down to half an eyebrow over each eye… limited lashes. Pubes are going now. Not that I care about that. That’s a plus as far as I’m concerned.

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But I realized tonight, after shaving my head stubble at the sink (surprisingly, even though all of my hair is slowly and methodically falling out of my body- my head is still sprouting stubble in the areas that hadn’t fallen out pre-shave. Nature’s fabulous fucking irony)- anyway, I realized as I turned off the shower and reached up- that I still do that: reach up. I put both hands to my head, to wring out my hair before I step onto the bathmat. Even though I haven’t had any hair to wring out for 3 weeks now. It’s like one of those muscle memory things. My arms just go- my hands just… rested on my head and then slid down, slinging water off of invisible hair that no longer exists.

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And it bothered me. A lot. I mean, it kind of took my breath away for a minute. That realization. And even after that… when I reached for my towel- my arms moved again, unwanted, unwarranted, and the towel landed with a *pouf* covering my head and face and I drew it down, again- wringing nonexistent streams of water from my nonexistent hair. And that’s when I sat down.

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I want to try and go out today. Just to lunch, or dinner with Kris. Just someplace local. Szechwan maybe. But I am so overwhelmed. Not by social anxiety the way I used to be- the result is the same but the feeling is different. It is anxiety. It is a desire to stay invisible. But it doesn’t come from the same place that it did back in those days. Back in the days when I couldn’t function. Back in the days when I couldn’t work, couldn’t go to the caf, couldn’t even go to classes for so many days that I had to leave college because my anxiety disorder won.

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The result is the same but it comes from a different place in my body now. A sick place. A tired place. An angry place.

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A place that isn’t deluded into thinking the world is staring and judging me because I’m a terrible person- but a place that KNOWS the world is staring and judging me… because I’m bald, and wearing a scarf on my head in 90* weather; because I’m wearing a surgical mask below the dark circles at my eyes. Because I look sick. And they’re wondering if I’m contagious, or pitiable… or both.

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And I am the least invisible person in any room now. That’s what Cancer has done to me this week. This month.

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It comes from a different place in my body. Not the headspace where my anxiety used to always live. It comes from my gut. Every muscle and every bone and every blink of my eye desperate to just look like everyone else again.

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And I thought I was beyond such things. I thought I was a warrior, a goddess.

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But I’m not. Not right now. Not right this second.

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Because right now I am naked. And in pain. And tired.

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And I want to wear a sign that says, “I have CANCER so you can STOP STARING NOW!”.

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And I want to hide in my room, in my bed, and just be invisible to the outside world. Because now I’m the person I used to pity. And I’m not sure if I’m angrier at myself for caring NOW, or for pitying people like me back THEN.

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I don’t want to be pitied. I just want to be invisible. I just want to be well. I want to not be afraid. Because I am afraid. I’m afraid of my body. I’m afraid of the medicine. I’m afraid of the Cancer and I am afraid that for the rest of my life I’m going to live in a state of quiet fear that even though I beat it once- it could still come back and beat me.

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So now I’m naked.

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And all I want to be is invisible.