Clean Slate

It’s morning, my favorite time of day, on Monday, my favorite day of the week. January is too cold to be my favorite month, but New Year’s is for sure my favorite holiday. I love the new beginingness of it, the chance to start all over fresh. I love this chance to pause for a moment and look out at the clean stretch of life ahead…a time with no mistakes in it yet, and no regrets. So, on this…the first Monday morning of 2009, I’m looking forward to a really wonderful year.

I’m settling into a new home now, and a new routine. I plan to make writing an everyday part of my life again, like it was back in September, before I started traveling so much. Moving from place to place and not having much of a daily schedule has been the main thing that’s kept me from consistently posting blog entries. But, even if I write for 3 hours each morning and force myself to publish something every week, I still have a problem that is going to get in the way of keeping up the Double Whammy Diary. I have a problem with sex.

I’ve tried really hard to give an honest and complete account of my cancer experiences. I want to share the real details of all the procedures, appointments and options I’ve faced and am still facing. I want to be open about the feelings I struggle with, even when they are embarrassing and unattractive. I want to share all the big and little ways in which having cancer has changed my life. I want to be unflinchingly and daringly forthright. I want to give a real, true, honest, unvarnished account. When looking over my recent memories, and deciding what to share, I don’t want to avert my gaze away from unsavory, impolite or intimate events. I want to take a full frontal approach to sharing my story. This means I have to write about sex.

Perhaps if I’d had melanoma, or cancer of the spleen, I’d be able to write from a neuter perspective. But breast cancer is unavoidably a sexed and gendered issue. I really do want to keep writing about breast cancer. But, I really don’t want to write about sex. You can see where I have a problem.

There are lots of reasons not to write about sex. What if I run for office and my opposition uses my sex life to discredit my character? What if I attract a stalker? What if prospective employers google me and find this blog? These possibilities don’t really bother me.

Here’s what gets in my way:

1. My family reads this blog. I’m not going to say any more about that right now except, thank god my grandma doesn’t have a computer.

2. If I’m going to write about sex, I’m going to have to write about being a lesbian. I’m afraid this will marginalize my perspective and keep some people from being able to relate to it.

3. It’s just plain scary.

I wonder what professional authors do? A lot of them probably just do what I’m doing, and avoid writing about such topics. But some of them write really honestly about scary, marginalizing things I’m sure their families don’t want to read. I’d like to figure out how to be like that. It’s too late to start using a pseudonym, so I’ll have to find another way to do it. I’ll probably make lots of mistakes along the way. But, I haven’t made them yet!

Happy New Year!