I cannot shop in the Rogue Valley.
It seems like anything I want I have to order. If I want a book the one chain bookstore in town will have to special order it. If I want a headband the local stores won't have anything in the hard style I prefer. I might get lucky with yarn in Ashland, but there's a better than 50% chance I'll have to special order. Fabric is a total crapshoot. And don't even get me started on clothes.
I tried ordering a bra. It didn't fit well. The cut was funny. It didn't sit well on my shoulders. The material bunched under my boobs.
It was a three week process to get it here. It will be another three weeks before I can try on another one. And another three weeks after that if I have to try on a third. Over two months just to buy a bra.
It is what it is. But it is everything.
I'm so heartsick over this that I cannot write today. I blink out 1500 words like breathing most days. Today my inability to simply go out and find something enjoyable to own is choking the words out of me.
Except for food. I can always find some kind of yummy delicious food.
I'm trying to get healthier. To keep my blood sugar under control. To take some weight off my knees. To burn enough stored fuel off my body to qualify for surgery to cut the loose skin away so maybe I can have a body that fits commercial standards before I die of old age. The last thing I need in my life is more yummy food.
Someday they will cut into my body, all the way around my torso, once just above my hips and once somewhere not far under my breasts. They will remove close to thirty pounds of skin. They will use over a hundred stitches to close this massive incision. They will install drains to allow my skin to weep as it heals. They will wrap me in tight bandages for six long months that will likely force me to remain in my home for months on end, safe in my air conditioned bubble.
They will remove more skin from my thighs. More skin from my arms. They will remove most on my mons and outer labia. I have no clue how they will handle my ass.
They will cut beneath my breasts, from armpit to center. They will cut around my areolas. They will cut a line connecting those two, remove pounds of skin, cut another line well up my breast, shift my areola up, and somehow stitch the whole jigsaw puzzle back together, Then they will put plastic bags full of saline under the muscle behind my breast to fill it back out into a rounder, higher, perkier shape. I may well lose all sensation in my breasts during this. I may well never use them for love again.
This is because I do get infections in the places where the skin hangs, and there is no good treatment. This is because the dangly bits are already getting in the way of movement. This is because there is a good chance some of those dangly bits are full of toxins that will not keep well as I age.
But make no mistake, this is also because I would like to walk into a store and buy clothing off the rack just once in my life.
Quite honestly I'd like to skip the breast bit. I can live without a naval but I am rather fond of my nipples. But that would require finding a bra that fits and functions to keep everything up and secure and keep the infections away and all of that. Which would require fitting said bra. Which looks to only happen east of the Mississippi, or so says the Oracle of Google.
Granted it's entirely possible that removing the stomach bit will make bras fit better. Funny but possible.
There is still something entirely wrong about having to contemplate surgery in order to shop.
And may I point out that it's not just me, and not just fat women. There is no place in town that fits mastectomy bras anymore. I feel horrible for the women with cancer, having to go through the 2-3 week ordering process over and over again to try to get a prosthetic to fit. That's a geometric progression in the level of suck there.
At the moment I would be soothed by going out to pick up any dammed trinket that was not eatable. A bar of soap. A jar of lotion. A skein of yarn. Unfortunately nothing is reliable. And I do not know how to sooth myself.
Looks like I was able to write after all.
Update: Looks like losing weight actually works. I tried on one of mu old underwires and it actually fit comfortably. I have a roll/love handle under my breasts that used to push up on the wires when I sat, ramming them up into my armpit and into the skin of my breasts in a very uncomfortable manner. But that roll isn't tight and hard anymore, it's loose and flabby and empty and it no longer pushes up when I sit, so the bra remains reasonably comfortable.
Still takes 2-3 weeks to get here, but at least now I know it will fit when it arrives. And with a well-fitting bra I can avoid a breast lift. I have truly wanted to avoid a breast lift.
I'm happier. Life isn't perfect, but it never it. It is however once again good enough.
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