Thoughts on Aging

I turn 43 on Sunday, which in itself isn’t so bad — I’m in a pretty good place physically, emotionally, professionally, and spiritually. But I recently realized that unless I move to Japan, Spain or Andorra (note – I’d need to google exactly where Andorra is in order to move there) whose women have a slightly higher life expectancy than the U.S.’s 81 years, I have passed the statistical midpoint of my life. I am middle-aged.

Hell, at this point, I’ll be lucky if I make it to 81. Cancer, the likely instrument of my demise, took my mom at 66, one grandpa at 72, and one at a tragic 51. Not loving those odds. Thankfully, both of my grandmothers lived past 90, with my Grandma Emily still going strong at 96 (probably reading this post on her iPad).

Thankfully, I often forget my age and am only thrust back into forty-something reality by my daughter. She thinks of the songs of my youth as “oldies.” The movies I grew up with and beg her to watch like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink are to her like Gone with Wind and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner were to me.

Also, knowing that younger folks might see me as old cuts a bit. I recently downloaded an app, surely designed by a millennial, and it gave me the following age options in the profile section: 12-18, 19-25, 25-34, 35-39, and 40 and over. Seriously? A) whoever designed that profile setup is a douchebag and B) are you telling me that everyone over 40 is homogeneous? Admittedly, when I watched The Intern, I related to Robert Deniro’s retired sexagenarian way more than sassy, young Anne Hathaway.

And it isn’t just younger folks who are conspiring to make me feel old; my darling, usually very complimentary, slightly older (52) husband told me I looked “SO old” when I fell asleep last night. Believe he used “a-ged,” with a stress on that second syllable. Granted, I do have smile lines, fine lines, and the dreaded “elevens.” And zits — yes, in an especially annoying twist of hormonal injustice, along with those wrinkles, I still get pimples. Not fair hormones, not fair.

While I’m on physical injustices, why didn’t anyone tell me that with age my gums would recede leaving huge gaps for chunks of chicken and broccoli to hide in? I would have brushed more gently and not waited until my thirties to floss religiously.

The good news is, aside from the aforementioned gum negligence and some (okay too many) tanning bed visits of my youth, I don’t regret much. Even my first marriage resulted in goodness — my daughter.

The main thing I regret is wasted time: time spent hating my body, zoning out in front of the TV, surfing social media, second-guessing my gut instincts, being afraid. Time that now, at midlife, feels very finite. And that is the ultimate upside of being middle-aged — knowing that although the first half is over, there is still a very precious half left, so make the most of it.