My Honest Opinion

I used to have a friend who, I would occasionally say, "kept me honest." My friend was a boy. He was 9 years old last time I saw him, but I had known him all his life. I loved him with all my heart. (I still do, though I might not recognize him now if he passed me on the street in full daylight.) What I meant about him keeping me honest was this. Sometimes back then, I would get extremely angry at men. It would be after learning about one more person who had raped or murdered or maimed another human being. As usual it would me a man doing the violence and, more often than not, a woman receiving it. Or, I would hear from my mother, who works to prevent domestic violence, about one more idiot who had inspired the headline, "Shoots family, then self." Only men seem to do these things in this order. Women, on the rare occasion they aim real bullets at real humans, at least have the decency to shoot themselves first most of the time.

Even though most men don't hurt other people, I would cry that all men are dangerous. Even though most men don't make such bad choices, I would shout that all men are stupid. Even though most men are capable of giving and receiving love, I would insist that they were all emotionally defective scum who should be eradicated from the earth.

I was young. I was angry. It didn't make sense to draw these sweeping generalizations about the other (slightly LESS than) half of our species. But, I didn't care if what I was saying was true, it felt like such a relief just to say it, just to hate them. If felt good and clean and pure and simple. Also, it was a lot easier that trying to stretch my mind and emotions until they were flexible and expansive enough to consider all the complexities of our gender based socio-cultural realities.

I didn't want to spend the energy. I didn't want to spend the time. I wasn't just being cheap, I was cheating.

And then, after a gibbering rage on the topic of "Man's Essential Evil Nature," I would have a visit with my friend. He was sweet, and kind and thoughtful. He was beautiful and perfect and dear. He was smart and loved to learn about science and nature. He was creative and made up stories about detective adventures and robots from Mars. He was loving, and paid attention to the likes and dislikes of everyone in his family, so that he was always a good person to turn to when it was time to brainstorm about birthday or Christmas gifts. He was silly and fun and helpful and affectionate. He was, in short, every thing a human being should be.

And he was a boy, on his way to being a man. Five minutes with him and all my generalized fury just fell away. Like I said, he kept me honest. He kept me in touch with reality, and squelched my ballooning ideology of anger before it took over my entire world view.

I'm thinking maybe this is what I need right now as I'm trying to sort out my thoughts and opinions on breast reconstruction: someone to keep me honest. I need to get close to someone who had the surgery, and really experienced it as a worthwhile, sensible procedure. I need to hear about someone who was plainly offered all the choices, and told of all the risks, and had the surgery anyway. I want to understand, or at least try to, the perspective of someone on the other side of my self-erected fence.

I don't even know where to start. I wrote about the woman I met a few months ago, whose "live breast" is now so much larger than her implanted one that she looks totally lopsided in clothes. This seems like a less than satisfactory outcome. I've heard about several mastectomy patients who started the reconstruction process but who, by the time they were ready to have their neonipples* attached, were so sick of surgeries that they decided just to live without them. I am fascinated by the idea of smooth Barbiesque globes underneath their clothes and would love to see them. But it doesn't make me feel any better about surgery as a viable option. I know a young woman who, after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 17, ended up with a double mastectomy and double implants. She's been plagued with complications and infections for years. Her story is less than comforting.

Maybe it's too much to expect that I'll ever find a woman who is actually happy with her reconstructed breasts? Maybe the most I can hope for is to meet someone who is satisfied, content. Maybe there are lots of women out there who really truly feel like they had a choice and that they made the right one by getting new breasts built. I would really like to meet them.


*I am just came up with this, but I think it might actually be a real word. I've been reading Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach. It's a fascinating page-turner and I recommend you read it for your own education and entertainment. If you do, you'll learn, as I did, that surgeons use terms like "neoclitoris" and "neoanus" to describe body parts they've created from scratch. "Neonipple" seems like a reasonable extrapolation, despite the opinion of this site's spell-check function.