A Million Weeks: Cancer Diary

I'm not in it because I look like a troll

There are many reasons I haven't written in a while. Two surgeries, the arrival of an oversized labrador puppy, and a quiet battle we've been slinging against a legal matter we can't yet talk about. The main one, however, is that I couldn't be fucked. I'm a hermit of late, hunkered down in the house, shit clothes, no makeup, zero desire to walk past my driveway. I've passed the point of missing dressing up and having dinner or seeing a band. I'm donezo. Living my little troll life of no hair and one boob and the threat of lymphoedema.

My hair is growing, but it definitely looks worse now than it ever has and will do for a good year before it's actually mine again. My hair was always the biggest part of me, my best physical feature by a mile and the reason I could get away with many lazy moments and lapses in the rest of my appearance. A spectacularly long high pony, perfect blow dry or a mermaid kink from the ocean and I looked passable. Have I talked about this before? Probably. I'm still not over it, never will be.

My new hair is short, black (unless grey, I see you fuckers) and soft and it's comically similar to the puppy. His name is Ringo and he likes chewing on the tube carrying my lymphatic fluid and blood clots from my former armpit to a little canister I have to carry around with me in bags that volunteers make out of fabrics that make me look even more like a 90s art teacher than I already do. That sentence needs revising but what am I, an editor? I carried one such body fluid bag into my best friend's office and she sarcastically complimented the very becoming chevron print. This is the level of my current self-presentation.

B presses her fingers into the smiling scar of my mastectomy.

'This one gone.'

'Uh huh.'

She squeezes the remaining breast and nipple.

'This one stays.'

'Yup.'

'Bots.'

She calls it bots. Z called it touch voovy. Both of my children have been so breast obsessed that it was my main concern about having one removed. What if they have to discuss it with their therapists when they're older? Bots just disappeared one day. Touch voovy abandoned us. One small consolation of having no left breast is seeing that actually yes just having big tits has always made me look way fatter than I am. The side with no boob looks much slimmer and even like it could run and jump after age 12.

But it hasn't been all sooking. I decided that I couldn't just rot on streaming services while banned from photos and life. I bought a few beads, designed a few necklaces. Bought some more beads, upgraded to gold plated findings, bought a better pair of pliers. Things evolved. I sat on the lounge surrounded by beads, head bent, left arm still as can be. I could do this forever, I thought. My mind emptied, I felt the scrambling subway station of thoughts soften, like a shouting crowd being dragged under water. It's something I've described before, a kind of meditation that I enter when I'm taking photos. I don't necessarily see what I'm doing, but sense it.

Anyway, Tim got around it and we decided if I was going to sit there making hundreds of necklaces we might as well sell them. Grace Riley (our girls' middle names) is about just having a crack. About my fear that I'm ageing out of being a cool photographer. About doing what you want to do because if you don't you might get cancer and die doing something you really fucking hate.

So now at the same time as being a troll, I'm hustling again. It feels insane but invigorating to be starting at the beginning. I haven't hustled for years in my main business, it just happens; enquiry, booking, shoot. Obviously, it's easier this time on the marketing side. I happen to know a photographer who can take all my product shots and shill her amazing family shoots in exchange for favours from models and makeup artists and influencers. And Tim's doing the boring bits. Despite that, we're working from the ground up on something I genuinely love doing. Seriously, if everyone could just leave me alone with my beads and my dog that would be excellent.

I don't know what week we're in because I don't have time for cancer. It's truly so boring and it made me look like someone who uses teabags twice. But I like making necklaces, and I like being alive.

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 Taya. x

Taya Reid is a writer and photographer working and living in Walyup on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja

Definitely my real hair

Email Taya: taya@tayareid.com

Instagram: @tayareidstories @ gracerileymade

www.tayareid.com