I Must, I Must, I Must Increase My Bust!

My man, is a boob man, plain and simple. I asked him what made him notice me, when we first started going out, and he said “your boobs, all we used to talk about at lunch when you walked past was how big they are” Any chance he has to look at a rack, he will. Any woman that walks past with a nice rack, he will tell me about. I have a fair few friends who are in love with theirs to. Flashing cars, taking photos of them at every opportunity (you know who you are!) or complaining that they are too small.

Then we see these women on TV, in Magazines, in adult movies, with these insanely big, unnatural crazy boobs. We were all born differently, some big, some small, some barely there, some hanging to the knees and I can understand some people need for enhancement. I really can. But I cant say that I really enjoy looking at a fake rack. If they are done properly I can appreciate the human ability to engineer a perfect set of boobs...but then there are the ones that don't move and that people cant feel...i just don't understand it.

But being the owners of these much desired body part definitely have its downsides. Currently 36 women in Australia are diagnosed with breast cancer every day. It is also the most common form of cancer among women, accounting for 28% of all cancer diagnosed in Australia in 2006. It is also projected that by 2015 in Australia, the number of new breast cancer cased among women is estimated to be approximately 15 409 for that year. In 2006, the number of women that died from this horrible disease was 2, 618. But its not just women that suffer from the disease with 25 males also dying from this disease in the same year, however males tend to have poorer outcomes due to delays in diagnosis. The world wide mortality rate was a staggering with 458, 503 deaths. Its just heart breaking.

We all know someone who has been affected by it. There have been a few people in my life that have been hit with breast cancer, a few of my work colleagues, a few family friends and my mum’s best  friend. Its always hard to find out that someone is suffering from this illness, but it is also inspirational to see the change in that person, almost instantly. Immediately the little stuff doesn’t matter anymore, all that matters is getting better and then its living life to the fullest every day. Someone wise once told me that its always a struggle to stop the disease from defining who you are, but you cant let your guard down and you cant get scared, you have to look it in the face and take it on with every breath and every bit of life that you have to pull through on the other side unscathed.

I did a little bit of research for this blog because I felt that I owed it to all the inspirational people that are either going through treatment, or surviving, or the people that are looking down on us with love. I was interested to find that smoking increases your risk of breast cancer, with the greater the amount of smoking and the earlier in life that the smoking begins, the higher the risk. I also read that not having children  or not being able to have children and undergoing hormone therapy can also heighten the chance of being diagnosed.

There isn’t really anything that will prevent  you from getting it, but there are things you can do to lessen the chance of it happening to you. Your risk of being diagnosed can be lessened by exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, drinking less alchocol, quitting smoking, living a physically active life, and breast feeding your children. Sounds pretty simple. But what about the people where their is a genetic risk of contraction? Early detection will always be your greatest prevention device. The earlier it is caught, the earlier is can be fixed.

I don't claim to be a doctor and im not telling you what to do, all of the information that I have put into this can be found through a google search. But I want you all to start thinking about it...the consequences, the stories, the journeys, the organizations fundraising year round for important research and programs to help sufferers.

One of the options with diagnosis is getting them both cut off, effectively removing all breast tissue and reducing the risk of it returning. Although, it wont necessarily stop you from getting cancer in another part of your body. I have a very close personal friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer a little bit before christmas. In our department at work we had another lady diagnosed a week before so it was a bit of a shock to us. She had the breast the cancer was in removed to be sure that they got all of it. She then went through chemotherapy but the treatment wasnt as long as some because they managed to find it early. The treatment was still long and hard, and her spirit through the whole thing was so inspirational. Her desire to be active in life again, and her positive view on everything made me really rethink the way I was dealing with things in my own life. It didnt seam as bad knowing that she was going through what she was.

She then elected to have reconstructive surgery, so that she could feel complete again, and be more comfortable with her body and herself. The way they did this was to make a casing out of muscles in her back for the implant, which sounds insanely painful. This was done initially only to find out that because of the scar tissue over where her breast was removed, the implant that she elected to have would not fit. There were a few complications in surgery which resulted in having to go under twice, infection, drains in her back, longer off work and ending up with one boob bigger than the other. That was about 6 months ago and she recently told me that the doctors have given her the all clear (and she has decided to) undergo further surgery to even out her boobs..for her confidence. She feels that she hasnt really been able to be herself and has been dressing differently and acting differently so that people dont notice. But i love her and i highly value her vision of the world and her confidence. She is an amazing influence and inspiration in my life and is deffinately a mother figure to me. Im not too sure what i would do without her advice.

I was also really close to my mums friend. She was positive and bubbly and and amazing woman. She would light up a room when she walked into it and make everyone feel comfortable. She was diagnosed, and fought, and survived breast cancer. It changed her. Made her live every day to the fullest. She lived for her friends and her family. She was a survivor! She got very close to the 5 year anniversary of her cancer clear when she started slowing down a little bit, doing things and not remembering. Her family finally convinced her to get a scan. She was diagnosed with brain cancer, was sent immediatly to Brisbane for treatment. A quick deterioration meant that we had lost her within the week. It was devistating. She was young and vibrant and beautiful. The world is a sadder place without her. But her legacy lives on with the community groups she voulenteered with and her family that bring nothing but hope and happiness into your lives. Cancer will always touch someone that you love, it might change them, it might take them away, but they will always live on through you, in your day to day life, in your actions. They teach you that life is a gift that is worth living with every inch of your being. You need to give it everything that you have at every opportunity to make it count. I will never forget her.

So with natural chest beauty comes the possibility of illness. With engineered chest beauty comes the possibility of pain, scarring, complications, dodgy surgery, infection. In this instance im not talking about the ladies that opt for a double mastectomy and then chose to have a reconstruction to feel comfortable with themselves and their bodys, or the girls who are less than an A cup and feel that they need this to live a normal life. Nor am i saying that I disagree with implants completely. I just feel as though society has created this ideal for women and if we don't have these gigantic, firm, perfectly sitting boobs then we are less than perfect.

When I first got with Mr Man I was VERY concerned about him seeing me without a bra on. You see with boobs as big as mine, and refusing to support them initially means that I have a subsequent sagging situation, and while it doesn’t mean that they are at my knees, or my bellybutton, they deffinately aren’t sitting where I would like them to be. He assures me that they are perfect  but that didn’t stop my insecurities about the topic.

Its a tricky one, I mean they are MEANT to come in all different sizes, but I was conditioned to believe that bigger and perky was better, when infact it didn’t really matter at all. Makes me cranky that I was hung up for so long on something that really didn’t mean all that much in the long run.

I have talked about, a million different things, all in a huge massive gigantic blur, but I guess I just wanted to say that, we aren’t perfect, no one, no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise, is perfect. I keep saying that we were made difference, and we were. One boob is bigger then the other, and did you know...that it has been scientifically proven, that no two NATURAL breast are exactly the same...on your body and in relation to everyone else in the world. My boobs...are not the same as ANYONE elses, no one else was born with the genes to make boobs like mine. That makes me a little bit happy and a little bit more confident. They cant be compared to the tv boobs, or the magazine boobs, or the surgically enhanced boobs. They are mine...and I am proud of them and I want to be sure that nothing happens to them that will affect my way of life.

So I will manually check them every week and I will get advice on when to start getting them checked by a professional. You might laugh at that but in all the stuff I have been looking at it has been saying that the general age of patience is getting younger and younger. Also keeping in mind that I recently found out that a girl that I went to school with who was a couple of years below me, was recently diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. So before you say “it cant happen to me” do the research, look at the statistics, go to the websites and read the stories.

Make the changes now that will save your life later. EMBRACE your boobs and be proud of them, but make sure you check them so that you will be around to see them touch your knees!! ( . ) ( . )

Waiting For Forever

We are taught from a young age that fairy tales are real...and that with great adversity and tribulation comes a knight in shining armour to save the day. That will take you away from the mundane life and treat you like the princess that you are. So we grow up expecting it, wanting it and having a crazy high expectation of courtship. Life isn’t always like that. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows and smooth roads. We all have to meet at least ONE person that destroys our heart and makes us lose all faith in the opposite sex. Like we are waiting for forever for the one to come along and save us from ourselves.

I just wanted to tell you the story of how my man and I came to be. It’s not really a funny story, or an interesting one, but one I have been wanting to document for quite a while and never really had the mental capacity to think about the events before. Nor did I really want to be reminded of my past. But here it goes!

I was 19 and was very much in the ‘party and have fun’ part of my life where alcohol and friends were more important than just about anything else in the world. Whilst ‘Lapping’ one night (yes I am aware that lapping is for Fags and that to drive around in circles for hours is a waste of time and pointless – I was young!) my best friend and I started being followed around by this ute...the passenger was pretty cute, the driver wasn’t really anything I’d look twice at. Long story short they approached us and the passenger asked for my number (which didn’t really happen to me often when I was with this friend – she was, IS, smoking!) and I gave it to him without question.

He started texting me straight away and after a meeting down the beach one night we started seeing each other a fair bit. Within 4 months we were living together. It was my first big love, first grown up relationship and it was great to start with. We got on well, had similar things in common, I got on with his family, him NOT so much with mine. Within a year we were engaged...and that’s when things started to turn around. We started to fight a lot...which was mainly through my inability to deal with adult situations, which must have been frustrating for someone of his age (he would have been 26 at the time) and his inability to accept my family or my friends. He had this habit of texting ALL the time, if I asked who it was, he would just tell me it was one of his mates, but if I had to use his phone for anything he would always be watching me to make sure I wasn’t looking at what I shouldn’t be. But then he would go through mine and read everything and get mad at me for things that were in there, before knowing the full story. I wasn’t innocent in all of this, I lied when he tried to stop me from seeing some people so I would lie about where I was going, I also had to change the name of some people in my phone so that he wouldn’t know who I was talking to. He was a little bit controlling, but with some of my lies, I definitely gave him a reason not to trust me. There was always something about him that was a bit off as well. Within the next year I had moved into a unit and we were trying to “start again”

This is when I met my current man! We worked at the same place and we had a fair bit of chemistry and used to flirt a lot. He was funny and interested in what I had to say, asked me questions about my life and what I liked and he was just genuinely sweet...but because I was still dating Man A nothing could happen with Man B, and nothing ever did. We just used to hang out and stuff but we both kind of knew that there was something else there and that we were a little bit more special to each other then we would admit.

Man A used to drive past my Unit and look for my car and if it wasn’t there then he would ring me and accuse me of sleeping around and being a whore and would be genuinely horrible to me and it would make me cry and just feel crappy about my life. My relationship with Man B became a little bit closer and he pretty much told me that he was into me and wanted me to be just his and then he kissed me and...My world fell to pieces...I felt it...he felt it....it was just this instant feeling that we belong together. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. Then as I was about to go home he told me that I had to chose. I couldn’t be with Man A and Man B at the same time because it wasn’t fair on him. Which I could understand...so I went home and had one very sleepless night trying to decide what I wanted to do.

I woke up the next day and acted like everything was okay. I didn’t do anything differently and when I took Man B home that afternoon...that’s when I told him...that Man A and I had history and it would be horrible to throw it all away when I feel like id be able to make it work. See...it was an emotionally abusive relationship. I kind of always made to feel like I didn’t equal up and that everything that happened was my fault and I had got so used to it that it was normal for me to apologise and believe that everything was my fault. But the good...the 5% of our relationship was so good that I just wasn’t ready to let go of what we had. It’s weird how that happens...someone can treat you like complete shit for the duration of the relationship and you will stay with them because when its good...it’s just so damn good that you couldn’t imagine being anywhere else in the world.

Obviously with telling Man B about what happened things weren’t really that great at work anymore. His group of friends were pretty mean to me and didn’t really make my life easy in the workplace and rumours about me soon started spreading around. They got bigger and more extravagant and I just couldn’t take it anymore so I left and found a job at the pub. My relationship with Man A didn’t really get any better, he was being really secretive and wasn’t really around too much anymore. He didn’t reply to my phone calls but he would still drive past my unit to see if I was home and abuse me if I wasn’t.

I was at the pub for a little while and became friends with one of the other girls, we talked a lot about life and relationships and we became pretty close. WE had the same lunch break one day and we were sitting outside and I was telling her about my man and what he did and how we were working on things and stuff when she asked me what his name was, so I told her. Then she asked me what kind of car he drove, so I told her. She then proceeded to tell me his address. I was a little confused and asked her what was going on. She then told me that her sister had been seeing him for the past few months. I didn’t believe her to start with and sent him a message asking him who she was...and he said he had never heard her name before and I believed him. So I went back to work, finished my shift and checked my phone. There were several messages from her sister telling me about the times that he had said he was fishing and come and seen her and when he told me he was going camping and he took her to Keppel and the time that he was on the phone accusing me of sleeping around while she was at his house...and he told her to run if I come over.

My world fell apart...I called him to ask about it all and he denied it for a while...but after 5 hours the truth come out...and the fighting begun. The reasons were endless and the fighting was nasty...the breakup took about 5 days to be fully over and emotions were insanely high. The first and only person that I called and wanted to talk to was Man B. I just wanted him to hold me and tell me that it was okay and that it would all work out, but he had since moved on and got a girlfriend and after my first crying phone call to him I realised that she was threatened by me and didn’t want me talking to him anymore, which was okay by me. So I turned to my friends and I got through it.

I just want to clarify that I am not blameless in all this...I did cheat on him...once...with someone ...it wasn’t Man B...and despite how many times he tried to tell me that I was sleeping with Man B for months it simply isn’t true...not at all. But the fighting got petty and he put the whole break up and relationship meltdown to my lack of drive in the bedroom. He said when we first hooked up it was awesome and intense and after about 12 months I got lazy...which wasn’t true...i was just looking for more of an emotional connection rather then a sexual one.

After emerging from my depressed coma like state I realised that I didn’t have a job, or a boyfriend...I was 21 and by myself for the first time since I was 19 and it was awesome. I had a friend move in to my unit with me to help me pay the rent and I just let things happen as they happened. I was offered my previous job back (the one I left because of being uncomfortable around Man B) and although his friends were still giving me hell about what had happened...after a week or so Man B really warmed up to me and was the shoulder to cry on and the person to talk to that I had wanted originally. It was awesome to have someone to talk to. We started hanging out a bit more and he started visiting me at home a lot more and it wasn’t long until we were an item.

The fighting, moving, breakup, reunion saga went on all within 6 months and that was four years ago. Man B and myself have been together ever since and we will be getting married next year.

I guess the reason that I wanted to tell people this is to let them know that you have to go into a relationship with the real you; you can’t be what they want you to be and then change halfway through. Don't rush in to something that is going to be full time and full on and something that you aren’t mentally ready for. It’s a big undertaking and it’s not just you that you are looking out for anymore.

If ii had of followed my heart in the first place and not my head I might not have gone through the 6 months of pain that I did, but I also wouldn’t have learned what it takes to make a relationship work or how to be a grown up, or be responsible for my actions. I also wouldn’t have got my friends back, the ones that I lost because he didn’t approve of them, or the ones that I made because of what he did. Man B dislikes Man A a lot...we are still paying off and cleaning up a lot of the financial stuff that I was left with (young, stupid and willing to please meant ALOT was in my name) and he was with me many times and heard the things that he said to me and seen the messages and they way that he spoke to me. I can completely understand his detest for him because I kind of feel the same way about him.

But I refuse to live my life with regrets. I am of the strong belief that if you didn’t go through the things that you do then you don't learn the lesson that that incident had to offer. I might have done things differently but I wouldn’t have changed the outcome. I have never been this happy or confident or content. I feel that I have really grown as a person with Man B and he really supports me in EVERYTHING that I do. I only with that everyone would know what it feels like to be as happy as I am when I’m in his arms. When he kisses me before I sleep...to be honest I still get Goosebumps when he kisses me and butterflies when he holds my hand. He is my everything and I would be nothing without him.

You have to look at the relationship that you are currently in and decide whats best for you. If the relationship is bad, then you need to get out. If it brings out the worst in you , and you have lost sight of the person that you used to be, you need to get out. If you are walking through the house and it feels like you don't even know each other anymore, get out. If he continues to hurt you and deceive you and you keep forgiving him, get out. If you let him hurt you over and over again, get out. If he starts getting funny about letting you see your friends, or asks you to chose between him and your family, get out. If he ever calls, accuses or insinuates that you are a slut, get out. If he makes you feel as though you aren’t worthy of your time, get out. Don't kid yourself thinking that he will change or that if you change things will be different, they never will be. Its emotional abuse, emotional blackmail, no matter how you look at it, its wrong and you don't have to put up with it!

If you decide that you still want to say...then it falls back on you...if you want to put up with it and keep getting hurt then you aren’t learning and you won’t get anything from the lesson that life is trying to teach you.

There is a light at the end of every tunnel...and after I went through everything I went through...and I cried as many tears as I cried...my knight in shining armour came and rescued me and carried me off into the sunset...and you know what...I will never look back!