There are several roads I could go down if I change my mind and want to fret - reading articles about how long my hair should be since I am now middle aged, listening to people talk about the decline of passion in marriages, or how to keep the passion alive in relationships, look at pictures of myself at 20 when hair color was optional and a sun tan didn't seem like a pre-cursor to sun damage...yes, I have ample material to make me feel like I'm past my prime in life, if I were to buy into that.
But I don't. Because it may sound cynical, but I defend it as sensible - the number 40 is a way to rationalize stupid, selfish acts, or to convince you to buy into them.
It's a simple formula shoved down the throats of the still-impressionable. "You've denied yourself, now is the time to indulge." Or, "Haven't accomplished all you thought you would? It's not too late!"
Quicksand.
I'm sitting here wondering why it's only now that I understand the things I was told in my youth by wiser people, but that isn't a heavy weight, it's the price of admission. And I don't feel the price is exorbitant, it makes me smile - often times to the point that little ones ask me "Why are you smiling? No one said anything."
"Nothing," I reply, and it's assumed that dementia is sitting in. But I don't mind. When I can smile and take things in, without stating the obvious or inserting my fears into a moment of all-planets-aligned, that is where I always wanted to be, just never knew.
When my parents were my age, I remember a movie called "Middle Age Crazy", in the era of "North Dallas Forty" and before "The Big Chill." I saw parts of Middle Age Crazy here and there and I remember wondering if I would lose my mind one day, wake up on THAT birthday and act like a child again. The main character, who turns 40, buys a sports car, alienates his wife, strays with other women, watches footage from his birthday party in which his wife cries about how much she loves him, and ends up spray painting the hood of that sports car, a rationalizing statement (that happened to be the name of the movie). I looked at my parents long and hard after that movie, challenging them because, it was understood, their chance at fallibility had passed. They needed to be well-behaved because they were adults, they needed to have it all figured out because they were parents (or vice versa).
Booby trap.
If you want to feel like an instant piece of crap, compare yourself to someone else, or measure your character against what society and the media say it should be. The age forty seems to be a magnet for these illogical measures, and I am not trying to be arrogant when I declare this practice as silly. Temporary insanity can set in at any age. People make mistakes as long as they are alive. And you are never too old, or too young, to feel just fine in your own skin, and at peace with your life as it is.
My hair is longer than it's been in years, but I keep it in a clip most days. I don't buy expensive, youth-sustaining facial creams because there are too many to choose from and it makes my brain tired. I recently started jogging not because I am afraid of gravity hitting me hard, but because it feels good when I'm done. And I can honestly say that when I am in the right (or wrong) light in a restaurant bathroom and my wrinkles are exposed, I remember how I got them (eating Hawaiian shaved ice on a beach reading Stephen King and Anne Rice while my best friend or honey/future husband snored in the sun on a threadbare towel next to me), and I smile.
"What are you smiling about?"
Nothing. Everything. Happy birthday to me. No regrets.
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