2011: The Year Weakness Won A Round

If one would have to title a year in the mental biography of their life (and every performer has that mental biography, thinking they're SO DAMN INTERESTING that yes, people DO want to know EVERY fucking thing about their life....) I'd have to title 2011 the year "Weakness Won A Round".

I am happy to put 2011 to bed. As in, The Big Dirt Nap. As in, Kill This Fucking Year Off and Let It Die.

It started strong. I was strong. I turned 40 in March and damn it, NOTHING was gonna stop ME! The eternal Female Warrior with brass ovaries and the drive to match, I was out there in the world and I was grabbing it by the short hairs and WOOO HOOO let's fuckin' DO THIS THING!

I assumed I was past my own self-destructive ways of letting old demons haunt me, that I had learned a thing or two about a thing or two (obscure movie quote there, for anyone who picked up on it. No, I won't say what movie -- that's for you to figure out) and because I AM FORTY!! I know fuckin' EVERY damn THING about anything and don't get in MY way lest I push you to the side and keep going forward!

You know, like a 20 year old.
A stupid, clueless, doesn't know shit about anything, 20 year old.

Then I stopped working out, because that's what I DO, and the weight started to slowly creep back onto my ass, and rather than seeing it wrote it off that I could "pick back up the routine when ever I wanted". Apparently, I didn't wanna. I packed on 20 pounds in '11 that I worked so hard to shed in '09 and '10.
Dumbass.

Then? The boobs. Ah, the boobs. The Malformed Mammaries that I was determined to fix. Most of you know, the surgery didn't go well. I started tanking in strength even BEFORE the surgery when over the Summer I had to quit smoking FOR the surgery.

It was in THIS moment I realized what a weakling I am.
The "Mind over Matter" mentality failed me.

I became someone I did NOT know when I gave up the sticks. I had cold sweats and panic attacks. I had mood swings that even the most PMS-y bitch on earth could not rival. I cried. A LOT. I screamed. I crumbled. My family didn't recognize me. I holed up in my house, knowing the process would make me unpleasant, and very few people saw the mess I had become. I was never so thankful to have outdoor loving children who missed the large majority of me crumbling like a dried up cookie at the weight of giving up a habit that in my youth I totally despised.

To add insult to injury I had friends who were former smokers bragging how EASY it was for them to quit, that they never looked back, and blah blah blah, and it made me want to punch puppies up and down my street in frustration.

I managed to quit. (No, it didn't last. Shut up, fuckers. DO NOT judge me. You have your weaknesses, too....)

I had my surgery.

Then? It all went wrong. Two weeks post-op the incision on my left breast popped every stitch in spite of me following EVERY post-op rule and regulation. I "took it easy" and did next to nothing. In that inactivity was where even more of that weight crept back on. I couldn't work out, run, or do jack squat. At least now I had a REASON for failing myself physically.

It took FOREVER for the infection to clear and the large wound to close itself off. In this time sex was almost non-existent in my life. I wanted to. My husband wanted to. Having a boob that was a pus seeping open wound kinda kills the MOOD for a girl, and with the elimination of my sexual activity I really now was someone I DID NOT RECOGNIZE.

Once all that mess healed, I thought, "Cool..... NOW we can get back on track...."

except the whole breast was healing.... well.... WRONG.
The shape of said left boob wasn't boob-like at ALL. Why did my tit look like a triangle with the corners rounded off? What the FUCK was going on? Why, exactly, WAS the implant on my left side reaching my COLLAR BONE when I laid down?

Depression was gripping me. I waited MOST of my life to fix this and ended up with an entirely new box of hell that I willingly opened? FUCK ME.

Rather than taking this problem with the same gusto and Bitchy Fortitude I did everything else, it almost broke me. I withdrew from my husband. I did very little unless I was working. Even household chores and daily activity felt.... too big. I was sinking into a dark hole of a text book case of clinical depression. Jokes that I wrote with heart and meaning felt false to me as I delivered them on stage -- pride in who you are! Laugh life's troubles away! .... I was starting to feel like a fraud, and once I realized that MY BOOBS were a large part of my over-swing mood swing into anger and depression I felt like an even BIGGER fraud. And an asshole. Because I let my physical appearance shadow the woman I am on the INSIDE, and let myself become a "Typical Girl" that just because I didn't feel I LOOKED pretty I let it make me UGLY on the INSIDE.


I'm snapping out of it NOW.

I know I have one, if not two, more surgeries ahead of me. I also know this isn't going to kill me. I know that I let it get the best of me.

I woke up.

Just under the wire of '11 ending, I WOKE UP. And in that, I plan to take the lessons learned from '11 and then BURY the rest of it. Pat and I fought a lot this year over personal things. Sometimes it leaked on to Facebook. We've renewed our vows to one another in a sense of BOTH OF US opening our eyes to the life we have and respecting it rather than BOTH acting like pissy little children tossing hissy fits and temper tantrums over the things in life that shouldn't MATTER enough to bitch about.

I'm not belittling what I've gone through -- It has been hellish. But I made a CHOICE to have this surgery, and in that choice I knew that things MIGHT go wrong. So, something went VERY wrong. But I still have an amazing husband, beautiful children, and a career I love. I have a cute little home that deserves my attention and care, too. I have a LOT. So, I'll probably NEVER have matching tits. Fine. It'll have to just be enough, when they're fixed AGAIN, and I need to let go of some mental image that surgery can totally right what nature fucked up.

No one is gonna get me back into work-out mode but ME. And I will do it. And if I don't I need to make friends with the Me I am rather than hating who I am because I think I can be something else.

I'm getting my Brass Ovaries back in '12, and keeping them. I'm not letting the stresses of outside family drama, or the shitty business side of comedy, or back-stabbing two faced assholes who claim to be my friend, or even my funked up fun bags, take my inner strength from me EVER again.

So.... fine. 2011 was the year Weakness Won A Round.
So be it.

Fight ain't over.
Weakness got this round, but there are many left, and they're gonna belong to ME.


Happy New Year, friends. Make it a good one.....

Hovering in the gray.....

In my life, the times of greatest stress are in the times of the unknown -- when answers would give one direction, but no answers are being given.

I've known since October that things with The Boob Job are going WRONG to a depressing degree. I've also known a certain "hold time" was needed. In this surgery, it can take up to six months for things to 'settle' to their finished location. I'm only 4 months post-op now, but it's CLEAR the direction isn't going to get better. If anything, things are just going to continue to get worse. Even in knowing that, time was needed for answers to be given.

And in that time, I've been slowly going bat shit insane.

It took me a lot of debate, inner strength, courage, to even take part in the surgery. There was the constant battle of the risk versus just "being okay" with what nature did to me. I've always hated this part of my anatomy from the time the boobs started to sprout. Anyone who's heard me on stage knows it all already. I tried, as best as I could, to develop a sense of humor about it but ultimately I knew...... I can't live like this forever.

Taking the leap of faith to have it done was a GIGANTIC jump for me.
To have it go wrong, so horribly wrong, has been weighing on me like lead.

I look in the mirror and think, "This is worse. Nature was nature. I chose to do this to myself...."

.... but it's not what I chose. Things went wrong.

So you think, "Okay, let's fix it...." but logic and reason says, "You can't right now, so live in the gray area...."

and that is where I become unhinged.



For 10 years, I had a sibling missing. She literally disappeared. We didn't know if she was dead, alive and in hiding -- there were no answers. There were times we would scream for them, with nothing coming back but silence. She's alive and well. Against the odds we have found her, but in those 10 years that not knowing was more painful than grief. How do you mourn someone if you don't know if they're dead? How do you get angry at someone for leaving if they're dead and you don't know it?



For years I was told I'd never have children. I miscarried four times. In the time of not knowing I didn't know what to feel. Grieve for the possibility of never being a mother? Hold on to hope that the doctors were wrong?



These are the times in my life when I am not the strong woman people assume I am. The not knowing is what shakes me. I can KNOW a horrid truth and deal with it. I can KNOW something unpleasant and DEAL WITH IT..... if I know what I am to tackle, and what I am supposed to deal WITH.




Today, I'm headed to the doctors. Today I get answers: Will he be fixing my botched boobs at no expense to me, or after the first of the year do I start looking for good malpractice lawyers? Those are the two roads ahead, and having to sit and look at both has been driving me insane.

I've withdrawn a lot. I have had emotional outbursts that are uncharacteristic, even for me. I have been moody and sullen. I've lost a LOT of my sassy confidence as a woman, feeling very weighed down by such a part of me that defines "Woman" in the physical sense.

Another surgery will mean down-time. Work missed. A good month or so where I can't hug my children or make love to my husband without caution. Another surgery will involve more healing pain, more stitches, more drains, more discomfort. ALL OF THAT.... isn't pleasant, but I can HANDLE it.

Legal battles? Fuck, who wants to deal with THAT? But I will. With my head high. If that's the road this takes, I can HANDLE it.

Living in the unknown between the two scenarios has been eating away at me.

I know a lot of people think this is just about tits, but it's not. And honestly, shame on YOU if that's all you're hearing. It's not about The Perfect Rack. It's about feeling normal. It's about feeling comfortable in your own skin. It's about feeling HUMAN when so much of you your whole life has been evidence to the contrary. I've taken all of Nature's practical jokes against my physical self and made a LIVING out of laughing along with the joke.

But this surgery going wrong feels like a MEAN joke -- the mean spirited humor I don't take part in. There is a difference between humor that is honest yet heart-felt and humor out of spite and anger. I'm ANGRY at my BOOBS. I'm angry at the surgery. I'm angry that when I FINALLY opted to FIX THIS..... it went wrong.

Answers will be given today.
I'm ready for either side of it.
I just need to know WHAT side of it it's going to lean toward. The "not knowing" has gone on LONG ENOUGH.