One Year Ago I Had a Radical Hysterectomy

my mother has ghosted me

One year ago today I had a radical hysterectomy due to heavy and irregular bleeding that prompted imaging which showed fibroids.

My surgeon was my OB. The provider who told me I’d tried enough interventions without success to control the bleeding and was now able to get this surgery.

The week leading up to it I nearly chickened out a few times, afraid of the recovery process being way worse than normal because of my worsened ME/CFS. I am beyond grateful I was braver than that.

My doctor met me in surgery prep, reassuring me she was the one who would be doing the part of the surgery that is inside the vagina – she is aware of and incredibly sensitive and respectful of my history of sexual & medical trauma.

She asked if she could pray for me.

I said yes.

While she covered me in pray I felt the love this doctor clearly feels for her patients (me) wash over me.

…

I threw up in/on my car twice on the drive home.

A few months later I learned I’ve a genetic mutation that causes my system to metabolism anesthesia much slower than ‘normal’. That’s now known and marked in my chart.

Kinda just seems fitting.

Just one more diagnosis to add to my collection?

…

Recovery was hard and slow, but I was safe at home with a partner who loves me deeply.

I know how lucky that makes me.

I know how poor and cruel my aftercare would have been had my narcissistic ex or my narcissistic mother been my carer.

I know no one deserves the ‘care’ received from a narcissist.

There’s been multiple times this past year when I’ve wept at the gentle, accepting, nurturing care he gives me. Tears of gratitude and wonderment and then grief at the realization at just how hollow and lonely life had been for me those first 40 years.

Little me, teenage me, young adult me, any-age-of-me never deserved to be seen and treated as a thing, an object – something to be used as desired and then resented when my own needs interrupted their plans or wishes.

I mean, my god, my narc mom was the first person I called on August 28 after I learned about my cancer. I knew the call would probably lead to pain, but I just needed to talk to family, I need to talk to my mommy (even if she’s never been safe), so I allowed myself to call and cry and sob and share words like: “rare and aggressive” and “extremely poor prognosis.”

Since that phone call I made?

She hasn’t called once.

Not one time has she cared to call and find out what stage cancer I have or if I needed more surgeries or chemo or even am I still alive. It’s the purest example of what happens when a narcissist realizes they can no longer be the star of the show in a relationship. She knows now that her incessant complaints about this or that minor and normal health concern for someone in their 80s are nowhere near as pressing or life-threatening as my cancer.

In a way it’s been such a good thing though. Like, it’s pretty hard to continue to entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, she actually does love and care about me, her only child. Maybe she didn’t mean to be so cruel to little me. Maybe one day my mommy will love me.

Now I can hold little me close and reassure her I love her so much and it was never her fault our mommy couldn’t love us.

But, damn, it sure does hurt like hell anyway.