Attitude, Gratitude and Platitude

Attitude, Gratitude and Platitude

I met a man at a party last year. In the midst of a discussion on cancer he dramatically and forcefully pointed to his head and said, “It’s all up here! It’s simply something people create in their minds and it manifests itself in their bodies.” He had a really mean look on his face when he said that. I excused myself and found other nicer people to talk to.

At the time I’d thought him a bit emphatic. I can’t really imagine anyone sitting around trying to manifest cancer. Few people I know would sit around praying, “Oh God, please make me ill.” Or, meditate on having the bad black cells overthrow the good white cells.

I have read and know and heard about attitude until I think I’ll vomit. I’m sorry, but when is it okay to be mad or angry and/or upset? When does the self-doubt and the guilt quit? I am now the maker of my own cancer because I don’t have good enough thoughts? Did not being able to visualize the good cells fighting the bad cells make me a bad person who cannot master this simple process?

Talk about feeling inept. Shit, I had no idea how hard it is to be upbeat and positive when I felt anything but upbeat and positive. Actually, I do know how this feels and I hate it. I’ve done it hundreds of times in my life. But, I’d also thought that I had finally assimilated all my ‘me’s’ into one authentic forty-something woman. I am coming up to my fifties, or as they say, the new forties so I guess this means I get to do it again and learn more about being authentic.

I feel betrayed because I feel like a loser who just doesn’t get the BIG picture. Or, maybe it’s this ‘Secret’ phenomenon that’s going around. We are all masters of our own universe. Well, my email to the Universe got fucked up. Microsoft sent it to the wrong address. So somehow, I managed to create my own shit, and now I have to lie in it. I’m sorry! (Why do I say sorry that so much? I’m not sorry! I’m lost in a sea of emotional turmoil and so afraid to admit it that I can’t think straight.)

In the blast of ‘Pink’ awareness I feel more alone than I have ever felt. I feel less equipped to share with anyone. I am less inclined to talk with people lest they think, ‘Oh poor Laura, she has no understanding of the power of thought’. I can hear them at parties and in offices saying, “She just doesn’t have a good attitude.” You know, of course don’t you Laura, that you simply ‘think’ this thing away.

So much stress is on my ‘attitude’. Even good friends tell me how important it is to have a ‘good’ attitude. Unfortunately, my ‘good’ attitude is in the dumper right now and not returning my calls. My ‘good’ attitude is not responding. My ‘good’ attitude has deserted me and left me with a pile of crap and a God forbid, a bad attitude that can’t help but slide over into the – well, what really are my choices now - ‘attitude’. Of course, all this with the knowledge, real or imagined, that if I only had a ‘GOOD’ attitude and been able to visualize GOOD results, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Summarized my choices read, like changing oil in the truck, either half a breast followed by more mammograms to make sure the rogue cells are all gone followed by radiation five days a week for five weeks, a mastectomy or do nothing at all. The negative side of me says do nothing at all, go back to the happy place you were in before and see what happens. The also negative side of me says, be positive, be an ‘off-with-her-breast’ kind of gal who values life more than her breast. (And for fucks’ sake, smile when you say this like you mean it.)

In the early seventies, some male toy manufacturer executives sat around a table and came up with a ‘Gumby-like’ doll they called ‘Flatsie’. There was even a little song that went with the ad that sang, “Flatsie, Flatsie, she’s flat and that’s that, Flatsie.”

I was wearing a training bra I didn’t need in nineteen-seventy-two or there about. I had the ‘flatsie’ song sung to me more times than I care to recollect.

I’ve dealt with ‘Flatsie’ issues all my life. Two stories stand out in my mind. One is going to buy my beyond training-bra bra at thirteen in Simpson’s. There was an entire bra section of the store. There were probably great saleswomen that worked there but they were not on the floor the day my Mum and I went to shop for my new bra. There was only a little old lady in my thirteen-year-old mind. She was probably fifty. But, she had THE loudest, screechiest voice in the world.

My Mum told her we were there to buy me a ‘real’ bra. “Why? She has no breasts,” she announced to the entire store, first and second floors. I wanted to crawl under one of the clothing racks only bras don’t take up much space and I’d still be visible.

“We can try a padded push-up bra but she’d have to have something to push up, wouldn’t she?”

At this point, even my Mum felt embarrassed. We left, but not before I saw a guy from school lurking in the men’s wear department snickering to himself.

My second bra story is as an adult. Not just an adult, but a mother, a twenty-four year old mother, but a mother non the less with some strong attitudes at this point. There was a great undergarment store on Eglinton Avenue near Yonge Street. I went in and explained what I wanted, bra-wise, to the sales clerk. I was cool. I was straight forward. I’d read magazines and knew what I wanted.

I thought I had stated my mission well. Then she looked at me and said, “Have you ever thought of undershirts? You don’t really need a bra.”

She didn’t say, “Can I interest you in this sexy little Teddie?” Or, “I agree, I nice black padded, push-up bra would look great on you.”

She offered me an undershirt! Was I insecure about my breast size? Yes, yes and yes!

I DoooOOOoooOOOooO understand the power of thought. At least I thought I understood the power of thought until some middle-of-the-night, out-of-body thoughtless ideas created cancer in a breast I have always appreciated.