Off My Chest

For much of my life I've walked around with almost the weight of four, 5-lb bags of flour strapped to my chest: my breasts. And I've always loved breasts--mine, and other women's.
However, I haven't loved the way men have stared at me, or freely commented about them. I got my first dose of that when I was 15. A man with a greasy smirking face walked up to me one summer day and asked, "Have you been sick lately?" "No," I said. "Why do you ask?" He could barely contain himself. "Because your chest is all swollen!" And then he stood there smiling, while I couldn't understand why big titties was a sign of ill health (and I
didn't get the sexual content of his comments for quite a while).
And big titties can be a strain in other ways. An ex-boyfriend from my teen years and I reconnected on Facebook recently, and he recalled that I complained at 17 of the pain carrying my breasts around caused in my shoulders and upper back. I thought about breast-reduction surgery, but decided against it after talking to women who'd had it, and who admitted they'd lost some sensation in their nipples (which are cut off and reattached in a lot of the surgery).
My breasts get smaller, a lot smaller, when I lose weight, but I haven't done that in a while.
The other day I noticed, however, that my neck and shoulders weren't sore. And I noticed yesterday that there is quite a lot of room now in each bra cup, and I'm on the last (smallest) set of bra hooks.
For some reason this has made me sad. I'm never going to have (nor desired) tiny breasts, but I'm feeling some loss as I see them getting smaller, loss I didn't expect, and hadn't ever noticed before.





Today I noticed that I am soon going to need