Chloe Cole

I think the loneliness was the first thing that made me start to question everything.

Yeah.

It was watching my peers start to go through relationships of their own with each other and then eventually learning a little bit more about, I think, just the human mind in general, but the way that we connect with other people and how the mind develops from infancy to adulthood and the importance of love in that process.

a psychology class of mine that led to me realizing more and more this is taking away some of the most human parts of my life and the further i go in the more that i deny myself of of all that and

I can't keep going in this.

It was about a year – 11 months actually after surgery.

It wasn't even a year yet when one night I just broke down crying.

I think a few weeks before that, I had just had a lesson in my class about breastfeeding and the importance of that and the bond between a mother and her child.

And –

I just had this moment after finishing that lesson where I looked down at my chest and I can just – I was wearing a shirt, but I could visualize the scars.

And then I imagined still having breasts and having a newborn and being able to nurse my child.

And that broke me.

After thinking about that, I couldn't function for –

for a long time.

I couldn't forgive myself.

I couldn't forgive my doctors.

And I just, I thought my life was over at 16.

I thought that I wasn't even going to make it to adulthood and that I was already ruined.

I mean, I...

I never really thought about women in that way.