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This week two of my favorite internet people - journalists, writers, bloggers, bad-ass women, Susannah Breslin and Xeni Jardin - revealed they have breast cancer.

I don't know them personally but something...clicked in my brain and my heart when I heard this. They're not personal friends to me, but they know each other (sometimes their twitter conversations with photographer Clayton Cubitt are hilarious!), and within three days of Breslin's diagnosis, Jardin's comes and I want to hug them!

Susannah Breslin writes about her experience on Forbes.com. Xeni Jardin tweeted her first mammogram, culminating in the diagnosis.

As I read Ms Breslin's post I'm reminded of how these things change you and your perception of the world. Something becomes askew and no matter how hard you try to express it, frankly, if you don't have cancer, you can't ever know. Your perception of yourself is two-fold: you begin to look at yourself, probably as damaged and fragile, and you begin to look at yourself physically, trying to find this thing inside you, as if you can see it crawling just beneath your skin, partly out of fascination and partly out of being scared.

I've never had cancer, but when I first discovered I was HIV-positive, it was the single thing that changed my life the most, not in an outward way, not even physically nor emotionally, but it fundamentally changed the way I see myself in the world. I mentioned to Ms Breslin how it reminded me of this, her post.

I have this idea that a few months, maybe a year or so down the line, once both Susannah and Xeni beat this, they'll be having a good ol' chat over coffee somewhere in New York (I'm not really sure why NYC), and laugh and talk about it. Maybe they'll commiserate. Maybe there'll be tears...

...I don't know, I'm sort of a little weird this way: sure, it's fucking cancer, but at least you're not alone. Is that terrible to think? I remember last year (man, time flies!) when Corey and I had that conversation about strangers reaching out to us about being HIV-positive.

No, I don't know Susannah Breslin and Xeni Jardin. But in a rather odd and a bit sad way, Ithink I do. And if you know them, give them a hug for me.