This Body is Bullshit

The Weight of It

Today feels heavy. Not dramatic-heavy. Just the quiet kind — the slow ache that shows up when you’ve been holding it together for so long you’ve stopped noticing the weight.

My best friend just had a mastectomy. She’s in the beginning of it — everything raw and new and terrifying. She doesn’t want to take the medication. She doesn’t want the side effects. She doesn’t want to feel like shit all the time. And god, I get it. I sat with her while she cried and I felt that weird cocktail of heartbreak and… something else I’m still trying to name. Maybe grief. Maybe frustration. Maybe just the quiet hope that she finally — finally — gets it. Gets what it’s been like for me.

Because I’m not sure anyone ever really did.

And I never wanted anyone to have to understand. But sometimes I wish they could see the full picture. The surgeries. The complications. The fear I didn’t perform out loud. The years of just trying to feel okay in a body that hasn’t felt okay in a very long time.

Here’s the thing about me: I didn’t cry when I was diagnosed. I didn’t spiral. I didn’t fall apart. I just did the next thing. And the next thing after that. And honestly, I’m still doing that — checking boxes, holding pieces, waiting to exhale. I’m not sure I’ve actually processed any of it. I’m not sure I know how.

I’ve been surviving for years. But surviving isn’t the same as living, and I think I’ve known that for a while without saying it out loud.

I show up. I smile. I work. I love my people. But I don’t always feel like I’m in my body. I don’t usually feel good, actually — and that’s a weird thing to admit when everyone sees you as the fun one, the strong one, the one who cracks jokes instead of crying. I’d rather change the subject than sit in sympathy. I genuinely don’t know what to do with it. It makes me squirm.

So I’m not writing this for pity. I’m writing this because I don’t want to forget what this actually feels like — to have survived so much and still just want to feel well. To be allowed a bad day even when you look like you have it together. To want more than survival without having to justify that.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel the way I want to. But I’m writing it down anyway.

Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to let someone read it.