I look like a cancer patient

It's not like I didn't know it was coming, like somehow I would be spared the inevitable. Every day, as I run my fingers through the shaved fuzz on my head, I look at my hand wondering, is today the day? Is today the start of another transformation? Is today the day I look like a cancer patient? And as I looked down at an empty hand, I exhaled. Today wasn't the day. Today, people would only still wonder, was I a patient, did I shave my head in support of a patient, was I a feminist trying to prove a point? They could only wonder.

The other night while my husband was at his bible study I was sitting on the patio, taking in all the fresh air I can before the air turns too cool to sit outside, forcing me indoors. I took a long breath, ran my hand across my head, and looked down at my palm, covered in hair. Today was the day... I blew the handful of fuzz off my hand, and then pinched a small cluster and pulled. I felt nothing, it didn't hurt, but there between my fingers was a wad of my hair. I sat there for a few minutes, looking at the small pile before I let the wind take it away. Today was the start of another transformation, another loss, another thing that will make even more people stare at me when I go out.

You can't go a single day without being overwhelmed with what the world says is beautiful. Perfect glowing skin, long flowing hair, perky full breasts. In every commercial, magazine, all over social media. It's everywhere. All the time. It's beat into your head since you're a kid what it looks like to be beautiful, what it looks like to be a woman. Nowhere will you find a breastless, hairless woman in a Victoria's Secret commercial being portrayed as beautiful. Or any commercial. Even being breast cancer awareness month, you'll see pink shirts saying "I'm here for the boobies" or "Save the tatas" Even in a month meant to have good intention, you won't be able to find something saying that a woman is beautiful despite what she has lost. Every day, you're surrounded with what the world accepts as pretty, beautiful, womanly, and by that standard I just don't make the cut anymore. I never will. The days of somehow being able to squeeze myself into that mold are forever gone for me. From this day forward, I will never be a complete woman, never be beautiful, I have lost and will continue to lose what the world says makes me a beautiful woman, leaving me floating out there somewhere between a woman, freak, a scarred mutant...

Yesterday, in annoyance with feeling my hair everywhere on me, I took a shower to wash it all off. I don't know how long I was in there, because as I stood under the flowing water the hair just kept falling out, and falling out, and falling out. And when I came out, looking much more bald than I did when I went in, I cried. Today, I buzzed the last of the patchy sections. Today, I look like a cancer patient. But as I stood there, staring at myself while my husband hugged me, he told me I was beautiful. Which was exactly what I needed to hear. Because for him, it's a battle to save me, not my boobs, not my hair...me...the woman he still thinks is beautiful. The woman he makes feel beautiful with just one look. He doesn't care what the world says I should look like, so why should I?

I'll be completely bald before the weekend is done I'm sure, and before I know it I'll be bald and breastless, but that doesn't mean I'm not a woman, and it doesn't mean I'm not beautiful despite that. I am beautiful, because God made me just the way he wanted to, and nothing I go through will change my beauty in His eyes. God doesn't look at me to define my beauty, God looks within me. Because that's where my beauty is held. That's where my worth is. Just like my husband, He loves me, for me. It doesn't matter what the world says I'm supposed to look like, because that's not why I'm loved, that's not why I'm beautiful.

Today, I look like a cancer patient. Today, I am loved. Today, I am beautiful.