I realize that I am writing these out of order. Some things are easier to talk about than others. Facts are easy, such as I only have one ovary or no one else in my family has these problems. What isn’t easy is the emotional burden infertility places on you. It isn’t easy to fully explain it — much less deal with it — so for years, I hid behind a façade that I was fine, FINE … nothing was wrong with me. Besides, who wants kids? Not me.

You see, there’s a whole another layer to my sense of self … of my womanhood: my breasts. My ginormous, pendulous, stupid, ugly, falling-out-of-a-DDD-bra-can’t-find-a-bigger-size, breasts.

Since Junior High School, I was teased, mocked, ogled, talked about, called names, and generally made miserable because of two sacks of fat on my chest. I was a 34D as Freshman in High School. Guys didn’t see me. They saw the twins.

“Hey, Melons!” said my classmates.

“Wooo, baby! Let me see them thangs!” said random drivers in parking lots.

“You know that you’re known as the (sorority name) with huge knockers, right?” said one of my sorority sisters.

Clothes were, simply put, a nightmare to fit. I always looked like a slut or dressed decades older than my age. Prom dress shopping reduced me to tears in dressing rooms. Dining room chairs were my enemy (constantly hitting and bruising them.)

By college, I was larger than a 38DDD.

Again, I hid behind a mask of not caring, but I did care. I didn’t like being called names. I didn’t like being known for a part of my anatomy that had nothing to do with me as a person except the emotional scars they had inadvertently caused.

Five months after my oophorectomy, I scheduled a consultation with a plastic surgeon to do something I had wanted to do since the age of 14.

On January 13, 2003, I had an elective reduction mammoplasty.

They drew on me with a Sharpie. They removed and reshaped my nipples, essentially ensuring that even if I could have a child, I would never breast feed it. The doctor took 2.25 lbs from each breast. They stitched me up and after a night in the hospital, sent me home.

I had so many stitches inside and out that it was impossible to know how many. I picked clear stitches out for 2 years.

Recovery was 6 weeks long, so I took a semester off from college. I read a lot of Harry Potter. I started a scrapbook I would never finish and a battle with arm sagging I will never win because I gained a ton of weight.

My Dad changed my bandages. I know that sounds strange, especially considering he was 100% against the surgery, but it was the best we could do. My mom had to work and my dad was on strike from his factory job. He almost cried the first time he saw them post-op.

“Sis, what have you done to yourself,” he asked despairingly.

The breast reduction was one of the single best things I ever did for myself. I could run, I could buy nice clothes that fit, and guys no longer chased me down in the mall or dated me only because of my breasts. That surgery changed my entire life in so many ways. Yes, I have scars. No, they don’t bother me much, especially not 11 years later. Not nearly as much as that little emotional wound I carry around with me that no one can see.

I can’t breast feed.

I was bad enough to lose an ovary, but now I can’t breast feed. I felt broken. Like, really broken. And I started to harden my heart against marriage and children because I knew that no one would ever want a broken doll like me.

(to be continued)