A first step towards meeting me!
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be someone else. I’ll spare you the details but growing up my life was complicated and chaotic. I always felt the desire to escape, theatre became an outlet for that and so did drugs.. and with that began a cycle of toxicity. I was constantly thinking my life would be so much better if I wasn’t… well… me.. I thought maybe if I was taller, skinnier, prettier, I would surely be happier. The thing I was most self-conscious about during my adolescence and young adulthood was my breasts. When I hit puberty, my breasts grew really fast and stretch marks formed. As I settled into my body, I lost some weight and all of a sudden I was left with sagging breasts full of stretch marks. I hated them and myself.. I never really wore anything that showed cleavage and wanted to hide every time I wore a bikini. I have an older sister and always looked up to her, growing up I always stole her clothes, or got the same hair styles, etc. When she was 27, she got breast implants and I loved the results on her and I thought “This is the solution I’ve been waiting for !” I was 23 at the time and decided to go ahead with the surgery. I got the same surgeon as my sister, he was actually a family friend and highly reputable. I did some research, but not extensively, and wanting to choose the “healthier” option, I decided on saline implants. “It’s just water” they said. Once I got used to my new breasts, I was so happy, I felt this new found confidence, I felt sexy for the first time in my life. I was the most comfortable in my body I had ever been.
To be honest, I don’t remember when the symptoms of breast implant illness started. Remember, I mentioned at the beginning my toxic cycle with drugs and all that.. Well, I wasn’t the healthiest to begin with, I was still taking drugs, smoking cigarettes, drinking, partying, etc.. so when I was feeling crappy, I can’t say for certain what the culprit was.. At some point, I really wasn’t doing well, and hit my version of rock bottom, and I knew it was time for me to make some changes. So I did, starting with quitting drugs, I embarked on a long healing journey. Fast forward to a couple years ago, after many years of being clean, sober, super healthy, having completely changed my life around and my lifestyle, I still felt like something in my body was off. I would think to myself “How can I be this healthy, but be riddled with anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere, why am I losing my hair like this, why is my digestion so messed up when I’m doing everything right?”
My mom had sent me an article about BII and I had dismissed it thinking it didn’t apply to me because my implants were saline implants, it’s “just water” as they had said.. However, I was determined to figure out these little health issues I was experiencing, so I went to my family doctor, did tests, saw a naturopath and the results were always the same “everything is fine, nothing is wrong with your health”. Except I knew that wasn’t the case.. I even brought up BII to my doctor and she had never heard of it. I kept digging and stumbled upon another article about BII, then saw some videos and then joined groups on Facebook and read stories of women and testimonials, and it clicked. I was certain that this is what was going on. It took me about a year of thinking, researching the right surgeon, getting information, supporting my body holistically before I made the decision to go ahead with the surgery.
Let me be fully transparent here, the explant surgery is NO miracle cure, it’s the first step towards a long healing journey. I’m so glad I took the first step, my recovery hasn’t been exactly smooth, but I feel like I’m meeting ME for the first time and I love who I am discovering. After years of hiding, I am fully accepting who I am, with scars, stretchmarks and all.
No matter where you are in your journey of meeting yourself, just know and trust that you will get there and that this real version of you deserves so much love and recognition from you first and foremost. Society has a way of making us feel like who we are naturally isn’t enough, that we need to alter ourselves and our bodies to be deemed worthy or beautiful, and that is just the biggest lie and most hurtful marketing scheme ever invented. YOU as YOU ARE is more than enough!! If you’ve read this far, thank you and I love you! You got this!
