Looking back to how I was before I had cancer, I would say that what made me nervous was everything. What makes me nervous a year post diagnosis? Nothing.
That answer is obviously too absolute for reality. But it’s a starting point.
I first learned the phrase “running piglet” from the book Chinese Medicine for the Mind: A Science-Backed Guide to Improving Mental Health with Traditional Chinese Medicine by Nina Cheng. “Running piglet defines a sudden rushing sensation that ascends to the chest and throat and a panicky feeling.” (P.89.) This very clearly describes how I experience nervousness or anxiety. The book even has an illustration of a distressed person with three yellow piglets in their stomach, ready to scamper upwards and into a pink trail leading up to the throat at any moment. I find this image to be very helpful in that it both contradicts the idea that nervousness is “all in my head” but also that it makes it seem so concrete and innocuous. I have little piglets running in my gut. I can deal with that. It was also a comfort to know that Chinese Medicine had a phrase and image that directly described what I was feeling. Meaning, in other words, that it was common enough to merit such a phrase. My chi might have been as chaotic as porcine babies but at least I wasn’t the only one.
Perhaps if I lived in China, I would have visited an herbalist to help me getting my chi under control. But here, in the United States, instead, I got cancer. I know that this is a scientifically inaccurate way of looking at what’s happened to me over the last year. But I’m a writer, not a scientist. And I’m a human. I’ve needed to find the story that would best bring wholeness and unity to my person: body, mind and soul. So here it is.
Those little pigs were trauma and nerves and unexpressed, well, everything that I had been living with. They’d been gathering in my stomach over many decades. From time to time, I’d be able to settle and quiet them by getting them drunk, or overfeeding them, or distracting them in myriad ways like overworking or overworrying. But the little pigs were still there, unexpressed, unacknowledged and just aching at the chance to run all through my body, disrupting the flow and balance of my chi.
In the western scientific way of thinking about cancer, it’s considered a disfunction of the body. My cells were growing out of control. Somehow my genes were expressing themselves poorly or incorrectly. Which, honestly, shouldn’t come as a surprise in a western world where honest self expression and communication is discouraged. I know I’ve often felt disconnected from my body. I am not I’m getting anything particularly bold or unknown when I say that women’s bodies (and specifically Asian women’s bodies and biracial bodies) are continuously objectified in our culture. It takes its toll on us mentally and physically.
But you know what is also true underneath all of that surface-level objectification and mistrust of the human body? My body is incredible. My mind had been completely cut off from understanding my body and yet it still managed to take care of itself. To take care of me.
The cancer was my body, after all.
My body was creating cancer cells to mop up all those running pigs that were disrupting my chi and balance and life. All that trauma and unexpressed emotion had been running rampant for too long and my body had enough. The cancer gathered it all up and dumped it into my breast. Why there? One of the first things I said after my diagnosis was, “at least I’m done with using my breasts.” I’d already used them to nurse my babies. It’s not coincidence that my breasts have always been the most objectified part of my body.
When I first had my mastectomy (which was unilateral), I spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I would look with only one breast. I had already made the decision that I didn’t want to have reconstruction. More surgery and then the maintenance involved just seemed like, well, a lot to deal with. I did end up buying a few tops and a bathing suit that would de-emphasize the lopsidedness of my chest. And I’m still not one hundred percent happy with my bra situation. (I was offered to go to get fitted for a prosthetic but I wasn’t interested.) Still, I was kind of fiddling around with what shirts to wear. But the more I looked in the mirror and got used to how I look with one breast, the less and less concerned about it I’ve been. I realized that what was going on what that I was considering things like what top to wear to de-emphasize my lopsidedness because I was concerned that my body might make other people uncomfortable. Imagine that? I just went through one of the toughest years of my life, and I’m STILL overly fixated on what my body does to other people. Dang. Such is the power of misogyny. Fortunately, as soon as I realized that this was part of my thinking, I was able to shift it. Because the truth is: I’m a total badass and I have the scars and body to show it.
There are other aspects of cancer that have helped me cope with nervousness over the past year. Leading up to my surgery, I was very anxious and nervous. By going through it, though, I learned to ways to deal with that. Talk about it. Write through it. Return to focusing on my breath. I gained a mantra coming out of surgery: I am alive. And perhaps most of all, I learned the incredible power of my body and that I can trust it to take care of me. I’d long thought that the mind-body relationship was unidirectional, with the mind controlling the body. I woke up from surgery marveling that it’s a two-way street.
So am I really done with being nervous? Of course not. Each emotion along the whole spectrum serves its purpose. Just yesterday, the piglets woke in my belly as I watched my son run precariously close to the edge of the water at the Baltimore Harbor. But the sound of my voice calling his name lulled them back to sleep. se to the edge of the water at the Baltimore Harbor. But the sound of my voice calling his name lulled them back to sleep.
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Rhena Writes 