Age is just a number.
You’re as old as you feel.
I’m going to be forty-eight years old on March 27th. Two years shy of fifty; two years before I am a half a century old. In all honesty, I’m not really sure how I feel about that.
I don’t really feel almost a half century, although I do have my share of health challenges. But I do notice a difference from when I was twenty and now. I was recently waiting to speak to one of my doctors, one who is still doing telehealth, in fact — and it’s a video call. So while in the “waiting room,” I could see a small video window of myself.
And wow. Boy, did I see a difference. I did see many years on my face. It helped that I had a picture of myself at nineteen (one of those Glamour ShotsTM, if you remember them from the 90s) right in front of me on my husband’s dresser. The differences were remarkable. I don’t have a lot of wrinkles, thanks to my family’s slow aging. But I could see a bit of a difference in my face and eyes. I looked, well, older. Of course, I’ve put on a bit of weight, too, as most of us do. (Also? Around that time I was actually underweight due to illness, if you can believe that one!) so my face and body are a bit more filled out. My hair is a bit thinner, too, also due to the same illness. I lost a lot of it and never got it back. Luckily, it’s so thick and course that no one can really tell except me. I also see it in my hands, how the skin isn’t as smooth anymore.
And, of course, gray hair. I started going gray at twenty-six!
But these are all just markers of age. Nothing to get worried about. I don’t look bad or terrible…just different. And not so different that I’m unrecognizable, either. Just enough that you know that I am definitely older.
Am I wiser? I believe so. The knowledge I have accumulated in the past twenty years…man. I wouldn’t want to be twenty again! I was…smart, but definitely not as experienced in life as I am now. There are so many lessons I had yet to learn, some painful. Some horrifically painful, in fact. But they helped me grow and helped me figure out what not to do, who not to get involved with, who not to trust. So many things. You can’t go to school for that. That’s all just living, day to day, the daily grind, dealing with people, dealing with different experiences, blood, sweat, tears, over and over again until you hit forty-eight like me and you’re looking back and going, “Wow. It’s been a long time. But it was sure worth it.”
I just wrote a poem from a prompt from HAD magazine on “50 words on nostalgia.” It didn’t end up being fifty words; I can’t seem to write short. But I ended up writing about my first boyfriend who’d dated me for a year, how we were the eccentric ones, the metalheads, how I thought I was in love then. We were going to move out of state and form a heavy metal band together, the whole thing. And then one day a mutual friend broke us up with a few promises. And how heartbroken I was. But the strangest thing is, while I was devastated and bitter and upset then (I was seventeen), by the time I got older, I had a whole different perspective on it. I forgave the friend, even helped her with some things. I forgave him. While we haven’t spoken in years, I ask about him from time to time to mutual friends. Just because I care. And those heavy metal bands we liked…the ones he got me into? They remind me of those times.
So, even at almost forty-eight, sometimes time has no meaning, does it? I can be seventeen again. Except without the heartbreak. I’d rather not do that again, thanks.
March 27th. Think of me. I’ll be having Mexican with my husband and some kind of dessert. We’ll celebrate low-key and quiet, because that’s how I roll. I’ll give thanks for another trip around the sun, for the opportunity to get older and wiser, and to remember.
How do you celebrate your birthday? Do you have any painful experiences that have changed for you over time? Let’s talk about it in comments.