Please Don’t Tell Me How to Feel About My Breast Cancer

Or any other loss I’ll inevitably face

I miss my boobs. I miss them so fucking much.

“Well at least it’s not like an arm or leg” some say.

Fuck off.

Okay, I’ve never replied, “Fuck off.”

I have muttered “yeah” as I mentally added them to the list of people I irrationally expected to know how to correctly behave in a very wrong situation. It’s wrong to have a part of you removed when you don’t want it removed. It doesn’t matter if it’s outside your shirt, inside your shirt, or inside your body. I’m the one losing it, both physically and mentally. Playing the it-could-be-worse game has no winners. I don’t need a spectator turning my grief into a compassion competition. Just repeat back to me what I say, like “Yes, this does suck” or “Yes, this is hard” or “Yes, I miss your boobs too.” Be my hype man.

“Be grateful you’re alive,” some say.

Again, fuck off. You know what I’m grateful for? When this person stops talking to me. Of course I’m grateful I didn’t die, but I also feel ungrateful that I got breast cancer. Yes, yes, of course cancer helped me gain a new perspective and learn some incredible life lessons, but I also gained a new perspective and learned some incredible life lessons when I tripped on shrooms and talked to a bush I thought was my dad. I didn’t need cancer to evolve. I certainly don’t need someone to remind it’s cool that I’m not dead.

“Have you tried a plant-based diet,” some say.

The “some” in this scenario is actually just one person who had the audacity to suggest I go totally vegan after my diagnosis. Bitch, I already have cancer! Your lentil soup isn’t going to help me right now. Also, my parents have been eating $5.29 processed meat subs from Market Basket for years and have minimal health issues in their eighties. Just sayin’.

What I need, what I want, is my body back. A body that betrayed me after I consciously nourished it, moved it, and self-cared the hell out of it. A body that has been sliced open, divvied up, and rearranged like cuts of cattle. A body that was forced to age prematurely and shoved into early medical menopause because the cancer fed off my estrogen and progesterone—the same hormones that miraculously made my child. When the chemicals that create life try to kill you, reconciling irony becomes a new maddening breast cancer symptom.

I miss the way I used to watch TV cupping my breasts like a weighted blanket for my hands. Sometimes I cup my new breasts but it’s not the same. My new breasts are miraculous, made from own tissue. I’m grateful to have these breasts but still wish they were my original ones. Even more so, I wish I had my nipples. Holy shit do I miss my nipples. I even miss the hair around my nipples that I constantly complained about.

When I think about my original breasts and the nipples that I’d had since I was born, a visceral emptiness and longing overtakes every part of my system. I want to stomp and scream like when my daughter’s iPad ran out of battery in the middle of K-Pop Demon Hunters. A daughter who will now have to mark “breast cancer” as part of her family medical history. I never had to mark “breast cancer” in my medical history because I’m the first in my family to have it.

Like a lot of people, I struggle with guilt and shame. I was about to write “like most people raised Italian Catholic I struggle with guilt and shame” but then I remembered that guilt and shame are the few things that unite all cultures and religions. Questioning how cancer was my fault was unavoidable.

I spent the first two month of my diagnosis in the bargaining stage of grief, examining my past in an attempt to solve the case of “why me?” Mysteries are impossible to solve when you are the victim, perpetrator, and detective.

Was it something I did? Something I said? Something I ate? Something I didn’t eat? Oh, I know! It’s because last year in yoga class I told the teacher the woman in front was filming herself and it was making me and the woman next to me uncomfortable. The teacher said, “Oh, she’s making a fundraising video for a breast cancer retreat.” Had I known being against the obnoxious habit of putting people in your content without permission would give me cancer I would have been the best damn background actor TikTok would have ever seen.

Was it because I felt too sexy and I was punished with having my beautiful soft perfect tits taken away? A titty takeover, you could say. After wasting my adolescence hating my body, somewhere around my mid-thirties I finally began to feel more comfortable in my skin. I was eating intuitively. I was dressing for my body, not against it. I was flowing and existing and feeling good. Did I get too comfortable? Was I becoming too confident? Was I developing (gasp) self-esteem?

Was it because sometimes I felt jealous? Judgmental? Bitter? Was it because of that time I talked shit? Was it because I stopped writing in my gratitude journal? Was it because my dad paid for college? Was it because I was mad that so many good people seemed to have bad things happen and so many bad people seemed to have good things happen? Was it because I drank? Was it because I was too privileged? Was it because I didn’t breastfeed? Was it because I left that nail salon a mean Yelp review even though they refused to fix my nail two days after my gel manicure? Was it because when some people in my life experienced grief I did the whole “it-could-be-worse” game because back then I didn’t know how much it hurt?

Eventually I realized I didn’t do anything to get breast cancer and that guilt wasn’t going to alleviate my grief. Grief is an inevitable hazard of existence. People are going to get sick. People are going to die. Parts of our bodies are going to break. Hearts are going to break. Couples are going to break up. Pets are going to be put down. Plans will get messed up. Jobs will be lost. Dreams are going to be dashed. Businesses are going to close. Money spent. Ideas unrealized. Trust betrayed. Objects misplaced. Parties rained out. Houses burned down. Sense-of-self missing. Hope gone.

And then eventually you heal. You aren’t fixed. You don’t forget. But you do feel better.

I miss my boobs. I miss them so fucking much.

Giulia Rozzi is a writer, comedian, and producer based in Los Angeles. She has written for shows such as HBO Max's South Side and MTV's Girl Code and has been published in The New Yorker, Refinery29, Esquire and Huffington Post. Her TV appearances include Conan, Comedy Central, CBS's After Midnight and way too many of those Vh1 circa 2013 talking head shows. Giulia also had the honor of giving a TEDx talk on humor and healing and often works as a creative coach for solo performers, corporate speakers and other types of storytellers. For more, subscribe to Seven Bodies, her Substack about breast cancer reconstruction and mental health.