Who Is This Woman?

This business of getting back to real life is turning out to be more challenging than I expected. Instead of gently sliding back into the life I used to live, I find myself acting out in reaction against the many months of being sick, scared, isolated, and passive to the ministrations of medical care. After all, I'm getting my energy back, so I deserve to let my hair down (so to speak) and have some fun, right? Not so much. I guess I deserve better than that.

My thoughts are tainted this morning by my regrets after going out for drinks with friends last night. If I've learned anything this year, it's that the irritatingly garrulous persona I tend to adopt by default when socializing, is not the real person I am. That "entertainer" role I play is my social anxiety showing, and alcohol makes me more likely to fall into that role. At the time I'm having lots of fun, but am always terribly embarrassed in retrospect - mainly because that's not the real me, who hopefully has more depth of character than that mouthy wench I become. There's always a face in the group through whose eyes I see my own distaste.

So at this juncture, as I return to the world, I recognize that I don't want to fall back into that old pattern where I present myself as someone less deserving of respect, and if alcohol plays into that, then I have new decisions to make. I'm not a frequent drinker, but I can't deny the research that shows that alcohol contributes to breast cancer risk. I'm already eating healthy and exercising, but after an evening out I don't recover very quickly and I'm thrown off-course from my exercise for a couple of days. It's clear I need to make a change. So I could give up the rare socializing that I do and not be tempted by social drinking, or I could drink water but continue to go out with friends and learn how to tone it down a few notches when with a group of people. If my talkativeness were easy for me control, I would have done it a long time ago.

To return to the world with my lessons and insights from cancer intact, to learn new ways to introduce a more authentic Michele to the world in social settings, and to live with all the restrictions and regimens that protect my health: that's a tall order and it's going to be damned hard. But since when have I ever done anything the easy way?