nights are getting harder

I shower at night, always have. I now cry in the shower, alone. My bedtime ritual has been stolen from me, and replaced with streaming tears, and gulps for air while my chest rapidly rises as I try to calm myself down. It is quiet in the shower, just the water running down my body, a body which is now foreign to me. I look down at my breast, swollen and bruised, yellow and dimpled like a pear and my arm pit, so sore that I can't wash my hair with my right hand and the tears come without any thought. I grieve in the shower too. For my husband, friends and family that are forced to go through this journey with me. For the woman I have lost-now hidden inside me, and for the woman I have now been forced to become--detached from her body, afraid, and numb.

I let the tears and snot run down my face. I give myself this time, my ritual has changed and I am working to embrace it. Maybe I need this time--I hold it together pretty good during the day--I am sick of tears and the panicky feeling I get when I think of what is to come. I need to wash it away before I go lay down for the night, before I try to close my eyes and quiet my mind of the racing thoughts that run a marathon of their own nightly. Water washes it all away, no kleenex to make my nose red and flaky (though it has begun to resemble my nipple quite nicely). It is gone down the drain--I step out and wipe everything away.

I am good for a period of time to be determined. I am good until I lay down, then the panic begins to come back. I feel it rise in my body like the temperature of water set to boil. As I write it is working its way through my stomach, soon to my chest--where a tightness takes over. I fight this tightness until my swollen, sore, weary body gives into sleep.

Today Scott ran his first full marathon today in under 4 hours! He is my rock, my strength and the person who I turn to at night when the tightness in my chest takes over. I am so proud of you babe! Love you.