When I was a child, I put a curse on my boobs.
I was obsessed with breasts. I always wanted boobs. At the age of three, I would draw flat, one-dimensional, naked bodies of women and their boobies. You’d think I was trying to be Picasso or something though. For a girl obsessed with uniformity you’d never know it from these drawings. One breast was always a rather large circle, while the other was smaller. I don’t know why I made that size difference. My mom’s breasts are uniform, as are all the other tatas in my family.
As I got older, my obsession with my boobs kept growing, as did they. Once they stood out a mere half inch from my ribcage, I demanded a “training bra.” Training them for what, I didn’t know. My breasts continued to grow, and around seventh grade, I noticed something different. They weren’t the same size! ‘Oh my GOD! I’m a freak!’, I would think to myself. How could something like this happen? Fact is, I have no idea how this happened. I used to believe that it was because of how I slept. I favored sleeping on one side. Perhaps that was why one was so much smaller; I slept on that one more, so it never had a chance to grow and prosper like its counterpart.
When I got to high school, I was all about push-up bras. Let’s pad the shit out of some bras and cram those breasts, in and up. I figured that was a great way to mask the one that was bigger than his friend. Yes, I say, “His.” Since he was so much bigger, I’d made it up in my mind that she must be a he. It was the late 90s early 00s when we didn’t speak about gender the way we do now. So I named my breasts to differentiate them: Antony and Cleopatra. Cleo was a sweet gal who didn't complain much. Antony can walk around without support, but it doesn't feel that great. Oh, the whole push-up theory? Yeah, that didn’t work. If your boobs aren’t the same size pushing them up is only going to accentuate the one that is larger.
At one point I was able to hold a pencil under each boob. The sag was setting in...and Tony had a better hold on it than Cleo. I was also on the heavier side then, and the fat had nowhere else to go but down. Then I lost weight and thought, ‘Finally my boobs can be normal together!’ I had thought that perhaps my weight had something to do with the fact that my breasts still weren’t the same size. Whelp, I lost the weight and lo-and-behold my boobs were STILL two different sizes. Not quite different cup sizes, as they had once been, but not as uniform as I’d hoped.
Then I had a realization when my mom pulled out that silly drawing I made as a young girl. I stared in amazement. I drew a picture with one boob bigger than the other! It came entirely out of my imagination. Three-year-old me had never seen something like this before; never seen two disproportionate breasts. The only thing that made sense to me was that, as a child, I put a spell on myself. Why else would something like this have happened?
That’s how I made sense of my disproportionate boobs. But, of course, no two boobs are the same. All breasts differentiate in size and shape. But doesn't it sound more interesting to say that I, as a three-year-old, put a curse on them?
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