As the year comes to an end, I cannot describe in less than a dozen pages the whirlwind of thoughts that bombard my head every day, trying to come to grips with letting go and making way for the new. I am, you could say, somewhat of a control freak, and letting go to me is no easy task. It takes me an enormous amount of effort, a bird’s eye view, and laser focused discipline to dissect whatever it is I am letting go of in a way that I am able to look back and think of it with love. That goes for E V E R Y T H I N G in my life: friends, boyfriends, dates, family members who don’t visit me while I’m in Brazil for two months, articles of clothing I later regret not buying, not getting fuel at the gas station I just passed while I’m running on fumes, arguments with my four year old who has now taken upon herself to tell me she’s not my daughter when she’s mad at me (her words not mine), fights with my (won’t tell her age) mother, who wishes she could tell me she’s not my mother when she’s mad at me; cancelled dates with my cousin, random thoughts unwritten in my ‘notes’ journal that have lost contextual meaning for whatever it is I meant for them at the moment of their conception… Well, you get the point. I need closure with things. I need to go through a certain ritual that lets me move on. Although I’ve only learned to say this out loud this past year, I’ve been this way all of my life. A closeted pretender of not caring, but secretly caring forever. A passive aggressive, doormat-ish friend/foe/lover who hated giving so much of herself and not asking for the equivalent in return.
It wasn’t that long ago when the news of Angelina Jolie dissecting (actually choosing to dissect her breasts because she tested positive for a cancer gene) blew up all over the media. I was horrified. I held my ground and did not condone her actions for one second. How, in the name of science, can you cut yourself in that manner and just move on like it’s the newest trend in Hollywood? My simple head could not wrap itself around the complications she could have faced during and after surgery, or the message she was sending her children and women all around the world. I admit I was appalled. This past November, during a check-up of my left prosthetic knee, I found out that the metal stem that connects my femur to the knee joint had come apart from the contraption. In a very, calm, well-mannered way, my brand new assigned surgeon offered me four options: re-do the surgery, which meant I’d lose a couple of more inches of my already shortened left leg from the first surgery and run the risk of having the same issue down the line; fuse the femur and the tibia together and never bend my leg again (a big fat NO); do nothing; and, finally, at the end of our 90-minute conversation, he snuck in the final option: amputation. “People in your condition often choose amputation because it’s less weight they have to carry around,” he casually added to lighten up the weight of the word itself. He did have a point, I thought. My biggest concerns involved my weight-bearing ability (I’ve been banned from bearing any weight since my left leg is completely disconnected) and my overall quality of life if I never stood up again. And, of course, most concerns came about because I have a child to rear. I would like to at least see her off onto her yellow brick road until she finds out that she’s always had the power on her own. The news the doctor gave me was hard to swallow. It was a blow to the conformist inside of me. Immediately, however, at the sound of the word ‘amputation,’ I was overwhelmed with the amount of work I’d had to do to let go of my cherished limb.
