Party pooping

You know how as you get older you feel as if you've gotten better? That you have matured? That you have some distance on your life? That certain feelings are—thank God!—finished? That you have gained comfort in your own skin? Well, I'm here to say it ain't necessarily so. This weekend I experienced the kind of social anxiety I last felt at a college mixer. Other and I went to the 50th birthday party of a friend of his. When we entered, Other was greeted with warmth and "I've heard so much about you!"—and I was barely acknowledged. It wasn't that people were being rude. It's just that they didn't know who I was, and I didn't make much of an impression. Almost everyone there was an academic, and people were busily networking and reminiscing, and I think it was probably a wonderful party. But I just couldn't insert myself. I sat on the couch by myself, watching—an old, gray, breastless woman of no particular attainments, watching the real people have fun. On another occasion I could have exerted myself, befriended some other nondescript person, whatever. But somehow I just couldn't that night. Then a woman came up with whom I had chatted many times in the park when our kids were little. I asked about a mutual friend who had been diagnosed with breast cancer a year or so ago. "Oh, she's so over it," said the friend. "She's already back in Africa [where she periodically goes for work reasons]."

She's so over it? Nearly four years out from my diagnosis, I cannot truthfully say I'm over it. I've come a long way from the days when I could think of nothing else, but I am far from over it. Indeed, I have made it an integral part of my life. I regularly attend breast-cancer symposiums to hear the latest research (I spent six hours at the 92nd Street Y yesterday at just such an event). I volunteer one day a week at a breast-cancer hot line. I dip into breastcancer.org for a few moments every day just to check in with my tribe. I think longingly of places I'd like to go—not Africa, but India, say—and it's not just the money that keeps me from buying my ticket; it's the fear of being too far from my doctors in New York.

After about two hours of eating mini-quiches on the couch, I slipped out the door and took myself home. I had spoken to almost no one, so there was no one to bid farewell. No one noticed, and no one missed me. I was invisible when I was present and invisible in my absence. It was as if I'd never been there.

But I had been there. And those words—She's so over it!—still ring in my head. And I realize, I've just got to get over it too.