For the past month or so I’ve been thinking a lot about where my life might be headed.

For the past month or so I’ve been thinking a lot about where my life might be headed. I realize this is a question with no simple answer. I am also aware that this is not a unique introspection as a twenty-seven year old woman. I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I am willing to start thinking big picture as opposed to what I’m eating tonight and what i’m doing this weekend. But it’s more than just the usual speeding up of time that has me motivated to find some purpose, it’s the thought that I might not have very long with my body as I know it.

A few weeks ago I took a blood test to find out if I am positive for a BRCA (breast cancer) gene mutation. Basically all it means is that my BRCA genes, which are supposed to help prevent breast cancer, are damaged and no longer effective. Only about .25% of the population suffers from it, and those that do are more likely to get breast cancer at a young age. My mom is a part of that relatively small group, and therefore I have a 50/50 shot of inheriting it.

This isn’t new information to me, I’ve been aware of the gene since my mom was tested about 10 years ago. She underwent a hysterectomy and double mastectomy pretty much immediately. Since then I have thought about it matter-of-factly. “Well I would take my breasts out right away,” I would tell myself in the shower. “Yeah, I’ll just get checked multiple times a year,” I would find myself thinking before bed. “Hopefully there will be some sort of cure all by the time I get there,” I would hope on my drive home from work. But alas, the time has come. There is no cure, and I have no answers. I was no more prepared than a hypothetical game plan that was: Breasts first, hysterectomy later. This way I could give myself some much needed time to think about my biological future. Do I want kids? And if so, when? How many? What if I have one and suddenly ache for another? For someone who never cared much for children these can be particularly stressful questions.So I figured I could give myself ten years, which didn’t feel tragically far off from the standard female biological clock, to figure it all out.

But when I talked to my doctor she told me that some women wait to get rid of their breasts until they are done having kids so that they can breast feed. Others “give up that idea” and take them out sooner. That idea is what scares me most. I don’t want to give up anything. Now I’m down another black hole of questions - If I have kids, do I want to breast feed them? What’s the real difference between breast milk and formula? It can’t be that significant, can it? Is this more of a bonding situation? And if so, isn’t there other ways I can achieve that? And if I’m suddenly set on breast feeding do I need to have a kid ASAP to get my boobs out? On and on the questions go, and the more questions I don’t have answers to, the more inadequate I feel.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to not be married and not have children. Until now, my idea of “giving up” was getting married and having kids. I’m not particularly proud of this, but in the interest of being candid, I often mock people my age who have surrendered to classic markers of capital ‘A’ Adulthood. Having grown up with a single mom who had me as a teenager, I delighted in the idea of a non traditional family and a non traditional life. I learned at a very young age that life is too short to give up any part of yourself.

It was at eight years old that the possibility of breast cancer began to loom over my life. That’s how old I was when I lost my grandma, the matriarch of my family. I remember I would wake up from nightmares in the middle of the night and (if my mom wasn’t home), I would sneak out and crawl very quietly to my grandmas room. I was so afraid of waking up my very scary grandpa that I would just sleep in the hallway outside of their door. The carpet was stained and the ground was hard, but I felt safe just by being closer to her. Sometimes now I’ll be watching TV and suddenly think about the moment my mom told me she was sick, but assured me she would be okay. When I’m doing my hair my mind will wander off to the gut punch I felt when she took off her wig for the first time to reveal her bald head. When it’s cold I think about her purple blanket, and how my mom and I would take turns with it months after she passed because it still smelled like her. I see a little girl and her mom or grandma and I think of that carpet beneath me. How scary it became when I had to sleep on it because that’s where her hospice bed was. She was gone less than a year after her diagnosis. She was 42.

It wasn’t until she died that I remember hearing the stories. My great grandmother also passed away of this particularly aggressive cancer when she was in her forties. My great, great aunt had survived it. Someone down the line had ovarian cancer. If you are a woman in this family, it’s coming for you like someone with a personal vendetta.

And so here I am, just turned twenty-seven. A completely unremarkable age except that I’ve had nineteen years to figure out some direction; The last ten being the most pivotal and somehow most aimless. The trauma of losing my grandma so fast turned me into a precocious kid growing up. And somehow, like an evil trick, it’s made me an immature adult. One who is scared and unable to face tough decisions head on. I find myself fantasizing about an epiphany. Suddenly unearthing a five year plan as if I misplaced it a long time ago. I’ve found myself praying that the results, positive or negative, will spark some sort of inspiration for me. Even at the start of writing this I foolishly believed my prose would be eloquent and inspired solely because I finally had something I needed to get out of my brain. Instead, I’m face to face with the brutal reality of someone who hasn’t written anything in five years. I guess I’m guilty of trying to skip the work and jump to the finish line in more ways than one.

I can’t jump to the finish line this time. Now, I can only sit and wait. Wait for an answer. Wait for something to feel right or wrong. Wait for this part of my life to be over. I do know this: I don’t want to resign to the idea that life just happens. I long to have authority over my choices. If they are misguided, or predictable, conventional or unconventional, they will be mine to stand by. Positive or negative I will march forward with intention. I am closer than ever to getting an answer to this question that has haunted me nearly my entire life. I can feel it. It’s waiting for me, and its changing me already. But it’s something else I find myself intimidated by. A bigger bad that I’ve successfully avoided for years. What’s next?